


Kissing Day

by Halfblood_Fiend, thesecondseal



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Friends With Benefits, Horses, Kissing Day Festival, Playful Sex, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-04
Updated: 2016-11-15
Packaged: 2018-08-29 01:54:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 26,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8471038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Halfblood_Fiend/pseuds/Halfblood_Fiend, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesecondseal/pseuds/thesecondseal
Summary: Not long ago I passed a milestone I hadn’t really expected to reach over on tumblr, especially after thesecondsealwrites became as much a personal blog as a (mostly Dragon Age) fandom blog. This coincided with my invention of the Kirkwallian holiday of Kissing Day, which in its simplest reduction is Valentine’s Day in the autumn.To show my appreciation to all of you wonderful lovelies I thought that I would hold a Kissing Day Festival this year, with cute fics, lots of fluff and sharing. I'll be posting new fics and prompts from different pairings (otps and brotps, au and canonverse) and collecting the fics from this week here.





	1. Kissing Day: A Kirkwallian Holiday

Kissing Day falls on the second Saturday of Kingsway (basically halfway between All Soul’s Day and Satinalia). No one knows how the day started, though there is some suspicion by the more jaded that it was an advertising stunt for a Lowtown bakery hoping to generate business during a particularly poor sales period. The earliest observations of the day were simple: sweet treats and sweet kisses, iced cookies in the shapes of hearts and lips, pastries thick with vanilla and a little cinnamon heat. It didn’t take long before the flower vendors were looking to cash in, and then the bards. Soon there was a song in every tavern about the lovers’ day.

Then the merchandizing started.

Decorations followed kissing balls and white lace lanterns, red hearts and lips shaped from wire and parchment scraps, twined into garland around doors and windows. The day soon became about more than romance.  Folks opened their homes to one another, feasts of friendship and kinship were added to the brightly colored desserts, and music and wine flowed as freely as on Summerday. If All Soul’s Day was about remembrance, Kissing Day became a chance to reconnect to the living, to reaffirm precious bonds. 

Of course, not everyone was thrilled with such manufacture of romance. Those participating had to work out signals, indicators that they wanted to share cookies or kisses or roses or song. They chose the color red because love and passion and already well-known branding. A ribbon is all that’s needed, tied on the arm or in the hair, but the weaver’s guild had to get their cut. Soon there was all manner of clothing and fabric filling market booths and shop windows in the weeks before the festive day. As the tradition made its way to Hightown, galas and balls and concerts became the height of celebration and each year the fashions became more extravagant.

With so much celebration–especially in the streets–Kissing Day meant a bit more trouble than usual for the guards, but the commerce was good for during one of the worst parts of the year, so no one complained. Well, no one anyone was going to listen to. Now the holiday is a city-wide festival attracting tourists and merchants, musicians and revelers from all across Thedas. It has been slow to reach across the Marches–so many of the city-states have their own harvest holidays that time of year–but rumor has it that some intrepid souls have recently begun spreading the tradition to Ferelden.


	2. Essa's First Kissing Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is actually what started the entire Kissing Day silliness. During OC Kiss week over on Tumblr, the wonderful halfblood_fiend surprised me with an incredibly character appropriate smooch between Essa and her Clint Hawke. In thanks for her wonderful art, I wrote the first ficlet, and Fiend responded with the second one. I'm including both pieces and art in this chapter (because it's too much fun to miss).

Comic Panels by Halfblood_Fiend. <3

* * *

**The Best Laid Plans by thesecondseal**

_Earlier that Day_ **_:_ **

“ _Kissing Day_?” Essa stared, mouth agape at Varric and Cullen. “Kirkwall has _an entire day_ devoted to _kissing_?”

She sneered this last, her upper lip beginning its curl over “Kirkwall” and rising into a very mabari-like snarl before she was through. Kirkwall had not endeared itself to Essa in the weeks that they had been visiting. Too many walls, too much noise, too many heartbeats crammed on top of one another. She missed the farm, missed the quiet Fereldan countryside. Even on the edge of Hightown, a good wind from the wrong direction and her entire estate smelled like Lowtown. When she was wasn’t worrying about Cullen, she was throwing texts on water treatment, drainage, and sewage on the viscount’s already overburdened desk.

“We’ll go in the fall you said,” Essa grumbled, nestling in against Cullen’s side. “The city is actually kind of pretty, you said.”

Sometime after Varric’s gift of title and holdings, Cullen had started thinking more and more about Kirkwall, and sometime after the worst of his new nightmares—when Essa was seriously considering sailing to the Free Marches alone and burning the entire city to the ground—he had determined that it was time he faced his fears and whatever ghosts of his pasts still lingered there. Essa hadn’t wanted to come, had definitely not wanted to drag Cullen across the sea to the city that had nearly broken him, but the man had been determined.   _You have holdings that you’ve never even seen!_ Comtessethis _._ Responsibilities that. And duty. Never forget Cullen “Duty, Honor, Faith” Stanton Rutherford. She had thwacked him for that “comtesse” nonsense and the grin he had given her in return had almost reached his eyes.

“Es—“ Cullen began only to be interrupted by Varric.

“It’s a street festival, Mirabelle.” His cajoling tone only annoyed her further. “Put up a few garlands in the windows and at the gate, light some lanterns, hire a musician—“

“ _Excuse me_?”

Essa glowered, shoulders tense beneath the warm weight of Cullen’s arm. They’d been sitting comfortably on the balcony overlooking the rear garden, sipping their morning tea and enjoying the quiet. She had almost convinced herself that it wasn’t so bad.

Until Varric showed up.

“I’m supposed deck out my _home_ —“ she wrinkled her nose at the dubious description. “Invite strangers into my halls and yards to celebrate a bullshit holiday no one else in Thedas observes, and then what? Hide inside for two days so that every moron in red doesn’t try to kiss me?”

She dropped her head back on Cullen’s chest and frowned up at him. He held up both hands in defense.

“Kissing Day wasn’t nearly such a grand affair when I was here.”

He glanced at Varric as if for confirmation and something in Essa’s chest both tightened and eased at the same time. By the Mabari, the man had been through enough, and in some ways, he was handling the weeks that they had been in the city better than she was.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, all ire fading beneath her shame.

“It’s alright.” He brushed a kiss to the crown of her head. “I understand.”

She believed him. “But you still think we should participate.”

“I think that punishing the staff for the nothing more than the misfortune of being ours isn’t exactly fair,” he said lightly.

“Ugh! Fine. Do what you think is best. But I’m going to hide in the stable with a book, and the only ones I’m kissing are you and the horses.”

*****

“You willing to put your money where your mouth is, Rutherford?”

Clint’s blue eyes flashed with mischief, but Cullen was pretty confident. Kissing Day had dawned with beautiful clear skies and birds singing. Essa had taken one look at the day and scowled, then—as promised—gone straight to the stable, a stack of books under her arm. Cullen had caught her brushing Geri earlier, stolen a grumpy kiss, then another, left her smiling and muttering with a promise to return once the house settled into what he had been assured would be a relatively predictable holiday rhythm.

Essa claimed to hate every minute of it.

The decorations were hung, pink and red and white, hearts and lace and wide pursed lips. Beyond the walls of their home, the city was waking with wild expectation, promises of revelry that would last this day and the next. In the garden, the musicians were already setting up and the air was thick with the scent of sugar and vanilla and cinnamon. There was a batch of cookies already set aside for the Herald; they were neither red, nor pink, nor heart-shaped.

As per Essa’s adamant instruction.

Cullen wasn’t exactly happy about the festivities himself. They had barely settled in—well as much as the two of them could ever settle in in Kirkwall—and having their home open to strangers—drunken, bawdy strangers—wasn’t high up on his list of fun, but Essa’s vehement rejection of the holiday was becoming more and more amusing. Throwing Clint under that particular carriage would just be a bonus.

“Hawke.” Cullen couldn’t stop his smirk. “If you can get a kiss from Essa, I’ll give you one myself.”

Clint’s eyes narrowed in calculation. “In front of everyone?” The rogue waggled his brows. “On the lips.”

“Why not?”  Cullen leaned back in his chair, affected something of an arrogant pose that had Clint’s lips twitching in mockery that Cullen chose to ignore.

“You’re that certain.” Clint leaned against balcony railing, feet crossed lazily at the ankles.

“I am.”

He knew Essa and unless she was merrily carousing with the Chargers, she wasn’t much for random displays of affection.  She was fond of Hawke—they had beaten Nightmare together and lived to tell the tale—and she enjoyed a good flirt with those she trusted. But not today. Today she was dressed in beige and glaring at anything that resembled “contrived, performative romance.”

Her anti-Kissing Day rant was rather impressive. The best of all her speeches except perhaps the fury she had unleashed at the Exalted Council. He was fairly certain Varric was going to include it in a book.

Cullen grinned. “I am,” he repeated.

“Your lack of faith wounds me.” Clint placed one hand over his heart dramatically.

Cullen chuckled, didn’t believe him for a moment. “I doubt your ego even notices my doubt, Hawke.”

“Fair point.” Clint conceded with smile. “What do you want if I can’t get a kiss?”

He crossed his arms over his chest, eyed Cullen with suspicion. Clint was wearing red for the day—Maker’s breath, it seemed the whole city was wearing red!—and he had more than one lipstick print on his cheeks, the corner of his mouth. His hair was a mess and he looked far too pleased with himself so early this morning. Cullen was looking a little forward to Essa rejecting him.

“Nothing.” He shook his head, took a sip of tea. “Watching Essa shoot you down will be pleasure enough.”

“You know, you’ve gotten cocky.” Clint licked his lips, made a smoochy face at Cullen. “I think she’s been good for you.”

“You’ll get no argument there.” Cullen lifted his cup in toast to the day. “I’d wish you luck, Hawke, but I don’t think it would do any good.”

“And you don’t want to kiss me.” Clint winked.

“And I don’t want to kiss you.”

 

* * *

  **Pay Up, Rutherford by Halfblood_Fiend**

As soon as Cullen heard the whistle from across the courtyard, he froze in the middle of his retreat. Maker, he had half hoped he could simply slip away, but the festivities had made that almost impossible.

Kissing Day revelries were in full swing and Cullen had dodged his fair share of all too willing Kirkwallers from the moment he stepped outside his estate’s door. It was all in good fun, he told himself as he allowed his cheeks to be so peppered with kisses, he could hardly keep watch on the stables. All in good fun.

Which was exactly why he’d made that bet with Clint Hawke in the first place.

Get a kiss from Essa, he had said. There’s no way you could do it, he had said. Cullen had been so utterly confident in Essa’s disdain for the holiday that he’d even raised the stakes: a kiss on the lips as recompense. For even though he was inclined to participate in the next two days, he was not about to give anyone but Essa his lips. Seemed fair to wager. But then he had to watch the stables in horror as Essa more than willingly pecked Hawke on the cheek.

Cullen had just wanted to torture Essa a little bit more, amused as he was by her staunch refusal to partake in Kirkwall’s celebration of affection. Serves him right, he supposed, for being a bit of an ass. In hindsight, he should have known better.

Hawke delivered. He always did.

“Yoo hoo! Commaaanderrrr!” Clint called playfully over the crowd.

Maker’s breath, never again. Why was he always so poor with betting?

He spun to face Clint, and tried to keep his expression decidedly neutral. He was flanked by both Essa _and_ Anders and Cullen could feel his face grow hot at the sight of the trio. Anders looked on in poorly concealed amusement as he nibbled on a handful of heart-shaped cookies—quiet but anticipating—but Essa stood close beside the Champion, ridiculous horse mask in hand, a triumphant smirk pulling at her lips. She bounced on the balls of her feet, looking between them expectantly. Cullen was certain he’d never hear the end of it from her. She would recount this until the day he died.

Worse than Essa’s obvious excitement however was the wide gleeful grin plastered across Clint’s face. He had won and everyone present knew it. Cullen wrinkled his nose at his smug expression as the man strutted closer, puffed up and proud as a lone rooster in a barnyard. Clint cocked an expectant eyebrow and crooked his finger at him before mockingly tapping his mouth. He exaggerated the pucker of his lips and made obscenely wet kissy sounds. Cullen scowled as Essa burst into a fit of giggles.

“You cheated!”

Clint’s bright eyes widened in mock surprise. “You _never_ specified _how_ I needed to get the kiss, Rutherford.”

Essa scoffed at him. “It’s not cheating if you play to your strengths, Cullen. Shouldn’t a _commander_ know that?”

“A deal’s a deal, Cullen,” Anders called with a smirk. “All is fair in love and war, isn’t it?”

“Kiss him! Kiss him! Kiss him!” Essa urged, pulling the mask over her face. “Kiss him!”

Essa’s chanting caught with the surrounding revelers like wildfire until it seemed the whole courtyard was joining in the chorus. Their cheers were nearly as loud as the blood rushing in Cullen’s ears.

He inwardly groaned, but Cullen knew what he had to do.

Before Hawke could urge the crowd anymore, before Hawke could drag the kiss out as he inevitably would, Cullen grabbed the other man by the waist, tugged him close and kissed him hard. He bent the man back in a furious kiss that had the entire crowd whooping but no one voice was louder than Essa’s, catcalling the two of them until her voice cracked.

When he broke the kiss short moments later, Cullen was pleased to notice Hawke’s shaky breathing and the look of shock that had finally wiped the stupid grin from his face. At least he could be glad to have _finally_ left Hawke completely speechless.

Behind them, Anders doubled over with laughter and Essa ran to Cullen’s arms, mask still firmly in place. Cullen had a horrible feeling that she would probably keep the blasted thing to immortalize his overconfidence for all eternity.

She gently nudged him on the head with the mask’s fabric mouth and made a soft kiss noise. “I _guess_ , Kissing Day might not be _all_ bad,” she said quietly and Cullen couldn’t help but smile.

 


	3. Kissing Follies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We kicked off the Kissing Day Festival over on tumblr with a very kissy #pony sunday. Here's A very fluffy oneshot from Acts of Reclamation. Cullen, Michel, and ponies. (specifically Folly).

Autumn was brief in the Frostbacks, somehow sweeter for the fleeting brushes of russet and gold, violet and flame. Cullen pulled his knit cap down tightly over his curls, trusting to the very good chance that with Essa back at Skyhold only Michel would be at the stable this time of morning.  Tomorrow he would shave his scruffy beard, comb his hair back into careful order, and don his sword and armor, but the wonder of today was still his—theirs, though Essa had left late the afternoon before. She was a part of him now. Everywhere that he was, she was there too.

They had spent the better part of the last month in Smoke’s Valley, and Cullen wasn’t ashamed to admit that he hadn’t missed his tower. Those stone walls might always hold fond memories from the last few years, but those were precious few amid the tumult of war. There was still work to do in the wake of Corypheus’s defeat—there had been runners aplenty back and forth between the valley and the keep—but there was not the same sense of urgency there had been now that the sky was healed.

Cullen was more than ready to put that part of their lives behind them. He no longer dreaded starting over. Essa had not given him hope–he had stubbornly clung to that on his own, Essa insisted–but she and Sera and Cassandra had fed those embers, and Essa made him daring, braver than he thought he could be.

And now, here he was, walking across a freshly cut hay field, not a clank of armor or flash of weapon on him beyond a boot knife and Folly’s new hoofpick.

Cullen shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat, pulled the heavy folds loser around him as he trudged past the last haystack toward tangling rows of pumpkin and squash. Cari had given the long coat to him as a belated wedding gift. Bright blue wool, cut with clean, military lines, hand embroidered at lapel and cuff with fawn-colored mabari. Essa’s heraldry, if she ever claimed any. His too now, and it suited them. 

Maker’s breath did it suit them.

The fur collar was a thick golden sable and picked up the sheen in the wide bands of stylized mabari.Cari said the colors brought out his eyes, but Cullen knew that she understood that he liked the weight of his ridiculous surcoat. It kept him grounded when he didn’t quite feel right inside his skin. The dissociation came less and less these days, but he knew he would never be completely rid of the ache or the want of lyrium. Yet, he could go hours now before he was reminded. That—just as surely as mornings like this—was a piece of the Maker’s mercy.

Cullen took a slow, deep breath. He could smell Essa, her skin, her shampoo, something warm and minty, lingering in the fur of his collar. She coveted his coat, and Maker knew he liked seeing her in it, but Cari was already working on the embroidery on a similar one for her in shades of smoke. He couldn’t wait to see her face on Satinalia morning.

And wasn’t that a wonder he had never thought to dare?

“Good morning, Commander.”

Michel was standing in front of the first paddock, arms resting on the second rail from the top, gaze narrowed at the dark jagged line of the eastern range. The sky was pearling grey, sun just coming up over the mountains to answer the dozen or so echoing calls of the valley’s roosters. From the pasture came a rough chorus of whinnies and in the barn another chorus answered, muffled by hay and grain and general morning contentment.

“Good morning, Michel. I trust all is well.”

The chevalier nodded, held one hand out nice and easy for the newest addition to Essa’s herd of warhorses. The sorrel was still skittish; the trip from Orlais hadn’t been a kind one. His coat was rough and patchy and there was a long, angry scab along his jaw. Cullen didn’t know the entire story yet, but it had taken the Iron Bull and half the Chargers to keep Essa and Michel from spilling blood on the courser’s behalf.

“He is curious,” Michel said, nodding toward the colt. The horse snorted once, loudly, and tossed his head, forelock snapping with a flourish. He stared balefully at Michel before snorting again. “And he is not happy about how interested in me he is.”

Cullen chuckled. Michel and Essa had a similar way with horses. They never asked for more than what an animal had to give. For all their strength, he had never seen either of them reach with anything but a soft hand. He supposed they had a similar way with people come to that.

“I doubt it will take you long to talk him round,” Cullen said lifting one shoulder in a shrug when the chevalier glanced toward him in surprise. “If there’s anything I can do…”

He didn’t know what that might be, but the offer was genuine and Michel surprised him with his swift acceptance.

“The halter you knitted for your lady.”

Cullen nodded. “The cotton.”

“Yes.” Michel turned his gaze back to the colt. “I believe our friend here would be more comfortable in one such as that until his jaw heals. If you’ve the time to spare toward it.”

Cullen tried to hide his surprise. “It’s quick work.” He ran one hand over the back of his head, fingers brushing over the tight knit. He pushed an escaped curl back beneath the edge. “Especially now that I know the way of it. I’ll get it to you before I leave this afternoon.”

“My thanks.” Michel lifted his chin toward the colt. “Perhaps when you return, he’ll have the manners to thank you himself.”

The colt sighed, loud and long, stomped his feet before moving to the far side of the paddock.

Michel chuckled. “Perhaps not.”

An impatient knicker rose from the stable, high and strident over the barnyard’s waking. Cullen had taken two quick steps toward the open door when he caught Michel’s smirk and slowed himself.

_A filly as strong-willed as your lady is prized among chevalier._ Michel was oft to reprimand him. _But it will not do, Commander, to have her training you._

“Go on.” He nodded toward the door and Cullen suspected Michel was following his thoughts. “You’ve both done well these past months, and she will miss you enough that it will likely be spring before she forgives you.”

Cullen wasn’t certain if Michel was exaggerating, but Folly whinnied again and he didn’t wait around to ask. He was going to miss the filly too. Cullen’s Folly had turned out to be one of the best mistakes he had ever made. Watching her grow and learn had taught him more than he ever would have imagined.Not unlike Essa, she kept him here, now, while simultaneously giving him days to look forward to.

He thanked the Maker daily for both of them.

The barn was warm and dim as Cullen made his way inside. Umber shadows still clung to hardwood and earth; the scents of hay and horse lay thick and close, teased through with the tang of sweet grain. He had never expected to be so at home here. To find comfort in the quiet rustle of hooves, the flicks of tails, the low discordant rhythm of strong jaws and broad flat teeth working through their breakfasts. He had thought Essa mad when he first found out she was sleeping in the stable at Haven, but more and more he found himself understanding, perhaps even envying her the solace she found there.

Another whinny drew him from his thoughts. _Horses demand your presence,_ Essa and Michel were both known to say, and Cullen had found to his great relief that they were right. He had no past or future with horses. Was neither a broken man nor hero nor general. He was only Cullen, and there was only now. Only what he was willing to carry to them.

“Hello, darling.”

The double doors at the far end of the long central aisle were open, filled with mountains and lightening sky. Folly’s stall was the last on the left, and she was waiting for him, head hanging over the door, brown eyes narrowed. She only sometimes appreciated the endearment that she shared with Essa, but if his wife didn’t have a jealous bone in her body, Cullen could not say the same about his horse.

He held out one hand in askance, waited for Folly to lip forgiveness against his palm. She was nearly a year old now, as golden as the sun and dappled richly from a summer spent beneath it. Her mane and tail were nearly white when she wasn’t rolling in clover, smearing streaks of green through both. Cullen suspected she did this on purpose. Michel was strict about her grooming and Folly liked the attention as long as no one thought she was asking for it.

“You’re going to be taller than me come spring.”

Cullen ran one hand along her neck, stepped close to the door so that he could note the height of her withers. Folly pressed her chest to the other side, turning so that he could admire her properly. She was nearly as vain as Dorian.

“Essa says that this time next year—“

Folly interrupted him with a huff, knocked his shoulder with her head. She didn’t like many sentences that started with Essa, but Cullen knew she would appreciate the rest of this one if she would let him get to the end. He pushed her jaw with one hand, scratching lightly behind her ear when she yielded agreeably.

“She says that this time next year, if you’ve done well with your ground work, you can start giving rides to the village children.”

Six months ago, Cullen would have laughed at the notion that he would ever talk to a horse the way one might a person. Essa insisted they knew exactly what she was saying, and Andraste, preserve him, he was beginning to believe her.

“You’ll like that won’t you?”

Folly nuzzled his cheek as if to reward him for his faith. She was fond of children, especially Nadie and Hope, though they would be a bit too big for her come next autumn. Still, there were plenty of children in Smoke’s Valley, no few whom Michel had to constantly chase off from the barn.

He would put money on Folly befriending more than one by next summer.

She snuffled softly as if in accord, and  tucked her chin close against his collar, velvet lips prickling with whiskers and rasping against his own. Cullen leaned into gentle touch, took another unfettered breath and murmured praises to the dawn. When Folly lipped lightly at his cheek, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to press a kiss to her jaw.

“Ahem.”

Michel cleared his throat and Cullen startled, more guilty than alarmed, body jerking hard enough that Folly jolted too. Her chest hit the door between them, rattling the hinges, head darting forward, to clamp over his shoulder. She pulled Cullen close in one swift movement, and flattened her ears at Michel.

“My apologies.”

There was laughter in his voice. Cullen pried himself from Folly’s surprisingly strong grip, turned just enough to see Michel standing with both hands up by his shoulders.

“I didn’t mean to intrude.”

“You didn’t,” Cullen stammered hastily.

His cheeks were warm, and it took every ounce of self-discipline to look Michel in the face. Beside him, Folly tossed her head, lips finally relaxing over bared teeth.

“I wasn’t apologizing to you, Commander.” He nodded to Folly, and even the low light, Cullen could see honest contrition mingling with the mirth in his eyes. “I’ll let you two get back to your kiss.”

“We weren't—“ Cullen reached up to rub the back of his neck. “I wasn’t—“

He _had._ Andraste, preserve him. He supposed that proved it then. Essa had completely corrupted him. He was officially as bad as she was about her “four-legged folk.” Folly sighed heavily, but Cullen was too busy bemoaning the absurdity of his bumbling protests to fully notice.

“Cullen.”

He caught Michel’s warning too late, looked up just in time to watch helplessly as Folly retaliated. With near taunting deliberation, she lifted her chin and placed a grain sticky kiss on Cullen’s cheek.

“You were saying?” Michel’s lips twitched.

“Nothing,” Cullen sighed, wiped futility at honey slobber and partially chewed oats. “You’re going to tell Essa about this aren’t you?”

“Of that,” Michel grinned, while Folly stared down her nose at Cullen, lips quivering with smug equine laughter. “You can be quite certain.”


	4. The Bitter and the Sweet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kissing Day preparations with the Hawke siblings. Some angst, some fluff. This falls in the noir au before the events of More Than Smoke.

Holidays had always complicated for the Hawkes, though since their mother’s death, Bethany did her damnedest to sweeten the bitter dregs of lives spent too much on the run. There wasn’t much hope of saving Satinalia. Garrett didn’t remember a single Midwinter morning when he hadn’t woken to his parents arguing. Leandra had never quite reconciled the wealth of her own childhood memories with the meager fulfilments she and her husband had to offer their children. There wasn’t a carol that didn’t bear the discordant trill of his mother’s voice twining in memory’s disharmony. The last one, of course, had been the worst. Bethany insisted they needed to make new memories, but Garrett didn’t think he would ever forget how Leandra’s discontent wounded his father year after year. They hadn’t had much, but Malcolm had loved his children, and he had worked hard to give them what he could.

Without Leandra’s unhappiness, they might never have known how little they had.

“You look like him more and more,” Bethany murmured from the open bathroom door. There was a wistful smile on her face. Something not quite forced. He wondered if the shadows would ever fully leave her eyes. “Maybe if we’re lucky, you’ll live long enough to see some silver in your hair.”

Garrett, fresh from a shower, was wearing a pair of old flannel pajamas pants and a red sweater that had belonged to their father. He met her gaze in the mirror, did her the favor of not returning the sharp edge of a similar truth. She was the image of their mother, colors inverted like a photograph’s negative. Leandra had been shades of gold, deep brown eyes and honey hair, warmth in her features if not in her heart. Bethany was a cold contrast, long hair as black as ink, stare as blue and brutal as a lightning strike, skin like frosted cream when her cheeks weren’t blushing bright as a Kissing Day rose. She was beautiful, as Leandra had been, but if her lips smiled less often than their mother’s had, they were more genuine.

There was not a heart in all of Thedas that loved as deeply as his sister. Not even with the whole of Kirkwall turned out in competition this week.

“Should have gotten his eyes.” Garrett flashed a cocky grin. “Wasted on the likes of you.”

Bethany laughed. “You hope.” She batted her lashes at him. “You would be grey within a month if _I_ started flirting with every suit that glanced my way.”

“You wound me.” Garrett reached in the medicine cabinet for a comb, began putting his beard into neat order. He didn’t mind admitting he was vain about it. He tended to look far too young clean shaven. Some of those grey hairs might not be so bad. “I don’t flirt with _every_ suit.”

“Well, not anymore.” Bethany leaned against the door jamb, crossed her arms over her Kissing Day apron. The black cotton apron was covered in crimson hearts and scarlet lips. It had belonged to their father in another life. “Are we ever going to talk about that?”

No, they weren’t. And certainly not today. There might not be much hope for Satinalia, but Kissing Day was something else entirely.  The only holiday Garrett could remember that wasn’t tainted with his mother’s melancholy. Falling at the end of harvest season, Kissing Day had been Malcolm Hawke’s favorite holiday and was, as far as Garrett could tell, the only one Leandra thought they celebrated properly. No matter where they lived, Malcolm had doted on all of them, filling their home with the scent of baking things and soft, cheerful music. Once they settled outside of Lothering there had been roses from Leandra’s garden.

_“Kissing Day is about more than romance,” Malcolm assured his children, even as he pulled his wife into an impromptu dance. Leandra’s eyes were sparkling, hands soft upon Malcolm’s shoulders as he spun them beneath a kissing ball. “It’s about love, no matter the shape of it.”_

_Garrett was thirteen, and had no use for any of those shapes. His father tossed him a wink, dropped a kiss on Leandra’s nose._

_“It’s about making certain those who love know that they are loved.”_

_“Seems a shame people need a day to remember that,” Bethany said pertly, glancing up from her lessons with a frown._

_She and Carver were eight years old and she was just beginning to distrust such things and people right along with them. Garrett couldn’t blame her. Love had been a mixed blessing in the Hawke house. By turns both sharp and achingly sweet._

_“It is,” Malcolm agreed. “But a greater shame to let such a day pass in silence, don’t you think?”_

“Garrett?”

Bethany called him back from his thoughts. She had never let a single Kissing Day pass in silence. Even the year their father died when Carver and Leandra both were determined to punish her for her persistence.

“You look far too serious to be thinking about Essa,” she worried.

“Because I wasn’t.” Andraste’s ass. He wasn’t always thinking about Essa Trevelyan. Garrett rolled his eyes, affected a maudlin tone. “I was thinking about all the cookies we have to bake.”

She snorted, not bothering to hide her derision. “You complain about that every year. I know the look well. That wasn’t it.”

He couldn’t decide which conversation he dreaded more at that particular moment, the one about their family or the one she had been trying to have about Essa for the past few months. May as well get the latter over with.

“It’s just a rebound, Beth.”

One perfectly arched brow winged toward her immaculately upswept hair, but Garrett pretended he was too busy grooming to notice. The last thing he needed was her skepticism.

“For her too, if you must know,” he continued. “We’re on the same page. Don’t know why the rest of you can’t get there.”

Bethany rolled her eyes, the gesture so like his that Garrett couldn’t hide his grin.

“Because you seem happy.” She accused, chin lifting, some of their father’s stubbornness hardening her glare. “Maker forbid anyone would want you happy, Garrett Hawke.”

As if he were even capable of something so clean and bright. As if Kirkwall would ever let him have it. He opened his mouth to say so, caught the curse for what it was between his teeth and smiled with tight lips.

“You really want to throw that particular dart?” he asked finally, running one hand through his damp hair and scattering water droplets.

She wasn’t much better than he was at allowing herself to have anything but misery. He hoped Fin Larkson might bring her something better. At least when he wasn’t thinking about the ways he might have to hurt the man.

“Not quite yet,” Bethany grinned, thoughts following his so easily. Too much of one mind, Leandra had always accused; Bethany and Carver had been even worse. “But I’m working toward it.”

Garrett put his comb back in the medicine cabinet, closed the mirrored door with a click. She had suffered the most, he thought. Of all of them, Bethany had been the closest with their father. Losing Carver had nearly destroyed her. Would have, if Leandra’s grief had had its way. She blamed Bethany for living, not that she would have ever said so, but Kirkwall had been the final wedge between her and her children.  Garrett and Bethany had moved out one bleak Satinalia evening amid a storm of tears and shouting. He couldn’t watch his sister’s heart break every day, seeing the resentment in Leandra’s eyes.

She had been murdered before they could make peace.

“About time,” Garrett said gruffly. He reached out, caught his sister’s wrist and dragged her into a hug.  “About fucking time.”

“Dammit, Garrett!” Bethany protested on a gasp, head tucked beneath his chin, arms tight around his waist in direct contradiction of her complaint. “You’re crushing me.”

“Gotta get in what I can,” he shrugged, easing up just enough that she could draw another breath to curse him again.

He didn’t say anything about her moving out. He had all evening to complain while they broke in her new kitchen.

“I love you,” she mumbled, poking him in the ribs hard enough to bruise. “You know that right?”

He did. And she did. Because the Hawkes had learned not to let important things go unsaid.

Garrett chuckled. “If I don’t, I’m sure I will by Saturday. All of these cookies better not be just for Larkson.”

*

“Alright, Bethany…”

The dread in Garrett’s voice was all the more beautiful for its predictability.  There weren’t a lot of constants in Bethany’s life, but her big brother had always been one of them.

“Where’s the sugar?” he sighed, staring morosely at a stack of cardboard boxes.

She had only taken occupancy just that morning, and most of her—pitifully few—boxes were not yet unpacked.

“It’s where it always is,” she answered, snapping a dishtowel at his ass and earning a yelp.

“What in the Void was that for?”

“Asking a dumb question.”

She was predictable to a fault and they both knew it. Garrett opened the cupboard by the sink, smile tugging his lips from the scowl he was trying so hard to maintain. Beside the canister of sugar was a bottle of wine, a bag of sea salt, and hearty wheat boule. Salt for spice of life, bread so that none within their walls would ever go hungry. Sugar for sweetness.

“Wine for joy.” Garrett finished the thought aloud. “Are we drinking this tonight?”

The tradition had been their father’s—as had the glass and stainless canister—something he had heard on an old Satinalia radio show when he was a boy. Old world blessings, the first things unpacked in every new home.

“That’s tradition too, isn’t it?” Bethany rummaged in one of the boxes for a pair of stemless wine glasses.

Their family had moved around a lot when they were little. Seemed they hardly ever had a chance to get settled somewhere before the Templars got too close and her father packed them all up—usually under cover of night—and whisked them off to someplace new. Bethany had attended six different schools before she finished her fifth year. Except for the farm outside of Lothering, the four years that she and Garrett had been in Kirkwall was the longest they had ever lived anywhere.

The Hawkes clung to their traditions and maybe Bethany clung a little harder now that there were only the two of them.

“I ordered dinner for Luigi’s,” she added. “Should be here around eight o’clock.”

The first night in a new place meant wine, bread, and pasta. It had been homemade once, but Malcolm’s red sauce recipe had died with him; Bethany had never had the heart to try to duplicate it.

“I may look like him,” Garrett muttered, passing her the bottle and turning back to take the sugar down.  “But you got his heart, Beth.”

Sunlight streamed through the near bare window, brushed warm and golden across his earnest face, turning dust motes to embers. Bethany’s hands shook. His words were so close to her own thoughts that she reeled for a moment.

“I…”

She set the wine bottle on the counter and turned to blindly rinse the glasses of packing debris.

“Garrett…”

She knew he couldn’t hear her over the water. Not that she knew exactly what to say. There were different times of the year when she could feel them gathering close. Memory and longing so tangled up with lonesome that she was certain she was haunted. The cold shriek of winter always bore some of her mother’s shrillness. Summerday would forever belong to her, Carver, and Garrett, laughter ringing toward the stars as they chased fireflies across some long lost summer night. But autumn? Autumn would forever be Malcolm’s, and sometimes, when the bright slant of an autumn evening gilded Garrett’s dark hair in russet and flame, she could hardly see him for their father’s ghost.

“You got more of that than you think,” she said, switching off the water and keeping her face averted so that he wouldn’t see the tears gathering in her eyes. Maker’s breath, she missed them. “But you still can’t bake a decent sugar cookie.”

She turned away, wiped her eyes with damp fingertips before she faced him again.

“You could just bake them yourself, you know.” Garrett leaned back against the kitchen counter, arms folded in an approximation of menacing that had never fazed her. “I’d be more than happy to get out of your hair.”

“And down to _the Tourney_ I don’t doubt.” Bethany hopped up on the end of the counter.

Kissing Day was two days away. Their father—and then Bethany and Garrett—had always spent the Thursday and Friday before filling their home with homemade baked goods. Her moving into her own place hadn’t let Garrett off the hook. He had been putting on a fine show of grumbling ever since she told him so.

Garrett didn’t take the bait. “I’m just surprised you didn’t kick me to the curb so that you could invite Larkson. Isn’t this sort of lovebird thing right up your alley?”

Bethany wasn’t biting either. “You know…I’m beginning to suspect you bungle them on purpose.” She leveled a bored stare across the kitchen. “A little bird told me you’re not actually a bad cook. That you make a fine batch of pancakes.”

His eyes rounded instantly and Bethany bit back a grin. Point for her then. She owed Essa cookies for the inside information.

“I do not!” Garrett gaped in indignation. “And that little bird is never getting pancakes again.”

She was trying to be a graceful winner, but there was a giggle trapped in her throat. A sudden effervescence determined to chase away her sorrow. If she didn’t let one of them go, she was going to choke. “You really want me to take that bet?”

“I hate you.” He made a threatening gesture with both hands.

“You don’t,” Bethany managed amid her laughter. “You’d be lost without me.”

“I do.” He pushed past her, nearly upsetting her perch.  “And I would. Now where’s the damn corkscrew?”

“Drawer closest to last cupboard,” she said. “You’re awfully cute when you sulk.”

“Shut up, Bethany.” But the words lacked any heat. He opened the drawer with more force than necessary.

“I still don’t like it,” he added, waving the corkscrew toward the open expanse of her new apartment.

His dark brows drew down deeper into the glower that hadn’t long left his face once she began moving her stuff out of the apartment they had shared since he moved them out of their mother’s place over on Sixth Street. He paced past her, thumped her on the knee in absent-minded annoyance.

“Yes, well.” She swung her feet, chose to misunderstand him. “Give me a few weeks and a few gallons of paint before you go passing judgment. It has good bones.”

The walls were still renter’s beige, but the equally uninspired white counters and once white appliances were at least clean. She hadn’t unpacked any of her dishes yet—not that she had many of her own anyway—but there was a bit of pink eyelet hanging above the window over the sink and the light was good. It was bigger than open studio that had been all they could afford for too damn long, but most importantly it was hers. All hers.

“That’s not what I meant,” Garrett said between his teeth, working the cork loose with more patience than his tone suggested. The cork slid free with a loud pop. Bethany held the glasses while he poured.

“Well, I don’t like having to bunk with Bela or Merrill every time you bring Essa back for a nightcap,” she retorted placing just enough emphasis on the word nightcap that Garrett flushed.

“I told you,” he grumbled, glaring over the rim of his glass. “That I could stop bringing her back to the apartment.”

“Unless you two are going to find another stairwell,” she said dryly. ”I’d still have to walk by you to get home.”

“That was _one_ time!” he shouted, nearly dropping his glass.

“One time too many,” Bethany returned, failing to hide a snicker. She set her glass down untouched.

Not one of their friends would have believed the furious blush in his cheeks. Garrett Hawke might be a brazen scoundrel, but his sense of impropriety seemed to draw the line at talking sex with his little sister. Bethany couldn’t resist teasing him.

“It’s not just you,” she conceded in an innocent tone, swinging her feet and hopping down from the counter. “I’m twenty-two, Garrett.”

And if she ever managed to get Fin past far too gentlemanly goodnight kisses, she sure as the Void wasn’t bringing him back to the apartment she had shared with her brother. She rummaged around in another box searching for their father’s mixing bowls and waiting for Garrett to catch her meaning.

“I know that.” He tore open a box with more force than necessary, tape and cardboard rending in protest. “Can’t say I like that either.”

Garrett found the bowls first, dropped them onto the counter with a clatter of stainless steel.

“Not at all.”

He ran one hand through his hair, tousling the dark locks into something as wild and unkempt as he had been since Anders left. Bethany knew she wasn’t supposed to approve of the change—Garrett had been almost cruelly put together before, sharp suits and sharper tongue, too much violence in his hands—but lately something had softened those brutal edges. Oh, he was still plenty dangerous, but she liked the rogue more than the warrior.

“You gonna help?” he asked, gaze not quite meeting hers as he caught her staring. “Or are you going to make me do this myself?”

“You’d burn them.”

Bethany grinned and reached for the collar of his sweater, tugging it back into place. The red cotton had been their father’s, and even before the years stretched it into a shapeless sack it had been too big for him. She would have to see about making him his own.

“You look comfortable,” she said after a moment.

He didn’t pretend to miss her meaning. “I’ve told you, Beth.” His eyes were sober now, cheeks devoid of levity. “It’s just a rebound.”

He frowned suddenly. “You didn’t move out because—“

Bethany laughed shortly. “No. I moved out because I want to paint every wall in my apartment pink.”

Garrett blanched and she continued ruthlessly. “And because if I’m going to seduce—“

She didn’t see the blow coming. The bottom of the mixing bowl cracked gently onto the top of her head, more ringing steel than actual impact. Bethany squealed, reached up to dust the end of Garrett’s nose with a flick of frost from one glowing hand.

“Hey!” The bowl hit the floor with a reverberating knell. Garrett caught Bethany around the waist lifting her high as she screamed with laughter. “No magic allowed!”

“What are you a templar now?”

“Andraste, preserve me!” He made a show of pretending to drop her, holding her against his side with one strong arm while he clutched at his chest with the other hand and stumbled back to lean weakly against the counter. “Can you imagine?”

“No,” Bethany snorted. “The reds are more likely to shoot you than recruit you.”

“Maker’s truth there.”

Garrett set her feet on the floor, laughter not quite reaching his eyes. She would remedy that before the night was over.

“Come on.” Bethany nodded toward the sugar on the counter. “I haven’t decided how many dozen we’re baking this year.” She paused for his groan. “We’d better get started.”

“Fine.” Garrett retrieved their wine glasses, passed Bethany hers. “A toast first.”

“If you say something trite,” Bethany said, raising her glass. “I will mock you into next year.”

His lips twitched. “Well now I’m nervous.”

“You should be.”

Garrett smirked. “To you, Bethany Hawke. May you build the life you want in your new place.”

He tapped his glass to hers with a ring of crystal . “And may you never forget that I live right next door.”

“And may you remember to confine your late night antics to the other side of your apartment.” Bethany clinked her glass to his. “I’m not at all above calling and complaining to management.”

 


	5. Kissing Day with the Hawkes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because it’s now canon that Essa hates Valentine’s Day and I couldn’t find a Thedas equivalent so I made my own. I, of course, had to extend that hilarity to the AU. This would be early Noir Au. Well before More Than Smoke, when Essa and Garrett were definitely Not Having Feelings™. This would also be Bethany and Fin’s first holiday. Yes, I’ll eventually figure out a masterpost for them, but for now I’m just writing whatever hits me and trying to get my mojo back. Fluff. total fluff.

“Happy Kissing Day!”

Essa stepped into the apartment she and Fin—and occasionally Cari—shared and immediately groaned. The place was festooned with white twinkling lights, red hearts, and lace garlands. There was a slow bluesy tune coming from the radio and some heavenly scent or six coming from the kitchen, but she’d bet her last paycheck they were heart-shaped or lip-shaped or covered in carefully lettered conversations like “Love You!” and “Main Squeeze!”

Bethany came around the corner of the kitchen entry just as Essa was fake retching into their umbrella stand.

“You don’t like Kissing Day?”

The younger Hawke looked completely confounded, and completely flawless. The red velvet dress hugged her from shoulder to knee, a flirty peplum catching light in the deep knap of the fabric and emphasizing slender curves. Her dark hair was down for once, style soft and loose, pulled back from her face with sparkling combs, and she was wearing smoky, dramatic makeup, her lips kiss-me red and pursed in consternation.

“Andraste, preserve me.”  Essa flung herself onto the couch, sprawled limbs still heavy and lax from the gym across cool leather. “ _You do_.”

“Of course I do,” Bethany said primly. “What’s not to like? Sweet treats and sweethearts, making certain those you love know how you feel about them.”

“If you really loved them,” Essa grumbled back. “They’d already know that. No trumped up consumer-driven racket is going to convince them.”

She threw one arm across her face, blocking all evidence of manufactured romance from her sight and waving her other hand at the room.

“How much did all this mess cost you?” Bethany made an indignant sound, but Essa soldiered on. “And are you expecting flowers? Because the flower market is even worse. Prices _triple_ on roses, Beth. For a solid week before this stupid holiday. And don’t get me started on jewelry. I swear, I hate this fucking day. “

“That’s it!” Bethany grabbed Essa’s waving arm and began trying to haul her to her feet. “You are not ruining my first Kissing Day with Fin. Get out.”

Essa, who rather easily outweighed and outmuscled Bethany, simply moved her elbow from across her face and stared down her other arm at the end of Beth’s struggles.

“This is my apartment,” she reminded her friend, flexing her shoulder slightly and considering her retaliation carefully. “It was supposed to be the only safe place in this Mabari-forsaken city.”

Kissing Day fell on the second saturday of Kingsway, and after the long somber stretch from Summerday was greeted with wild abandon in Kirkwall. There wasn’t a storefront or flower cart unmarred by red and white decorations or emotionally manipulative marketing strategies.

“Why couldn’t you do all this at your apartment?” Essa asked, tugging just enough that Bethany skidded on the heels of her very tall, very sexy black peep-toe pumps. When they stopped arguing about Kissing Day, she’d have to find out where Bethany had come by them. “It’s pink already.”

“It’s also above the only tavern in town that hates Kissing Day as much as you do,” Bethany griped. “Kind of hard to set a romantic mood when downstairs they’ll be throwing darts and knives and singing “don’t need no woman, don’t need no man” ballads all night.”

She gave Essa’s arm another hard pull and Essa finally pulled back, dragging Bethany down on top of her. She landed with a grunt just as the front door opened, spilling Fin and Garrett into the apartment.

“Well, now.” Fin’s blue eyes were bright with mischief. “I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this, given Essa’s nearly my sister and all, but if you two want—“

“Ew, Fin!” Essa smiled up at Bethany, hoping to soften what she realized had sounded insulting. “Not you, Beth, you’re smoking hot, but Fin. UGH.”

“Thanks for that,” Fin said wryly, stepping farther into the living room.

“Well, one of them _is_ my sister.” Garrett’s deep voice grumbled. “So I’m going say ‘ew’—“ The words was a dry mimic of Essa’s and had them all laughing. “Trevelyan, stop ogling Bethany.”

Essa snickered. “I want those shoes.”

“I’ll tell you where I got them only if you take your holiday-spoiling ass out of here tonight,” Bethany retorted.

“Vicious!” Essa stared across the apartment at Fin. “Do you hear this one? Kicking me out of my own place.”

“I just hadn’t gotten around to it,” he retorted, lips curving quick then sweet as he strode to the couch and lifted Bethany from Essa’s lap with one hand. The other was tucked suspiciously behind his back. “You have a bag packed on your bed.”

“Traitor!” Essa crowed.

Not that anyone seemed to care. Fin ducked his head down to feather a kiss across Beth’s lifted lips.

“Happy Kissing Day,” he murmured, kicking Essa’s dangling foot when she started twitching. “These are for you.”

The roses were the same color as Bethany’s dress and there had to be at least two dozen of them. Bethany’s breath hitched and her eyes went immediately soft. Essa glanced away, gaze landing on Garrett and she realized he had his hands behind his back too.

“If you got me anything,” she threatened, meaning it. “I will beat your ass and you’ll be finding another fuck buddy.”

Fin choked on something that sounded suspiciously like laughter and Garrett grinned, wide and toothy. He pulled empty hands from behind his back.

“Oh, I’ve got something for you—”

“Garrett Hawke.” There was ice in Bethany’s voice. “I swear to the Maker if you even _mention_ your pants right now I will give your favorite appendage the worst case of frostbite you’ve ever seen.”

Essa clapped one hand over her mouth, muffling her laughter as Garrett feigned innocence.

“But if you want overpriced flowers or chocolates,” he continued as if his sister hadn’t cowed him from saying the exact words he’d been about to say. “Then you can buy them your damn self.”

“Exactly!” Essa agreed, dodging another kick from Fin.

Garrett’s lips pursed thoughtfully. “Of course, play your cards right tonight and I might buy you some of the clearance roses tomorrow.”

“I’d kiss you,” Essa replied. “But I’m boycotting this entire day.”

“So no kissing?” He chewed on his lips as if to punish her for even thinking it. “Everywhere? Or just lips?”

“Get! Out!”

Essa was on the floor before she could answer, boots frosted with ice. Bethany’s soft eyes were crackling, and her hands were glowing. Fin looked that much more smitten.

The jerk.

“I hate the two of you,” Bethany declared as Garrett stepped forward, hauled Essa up amid the twining songs of their laughter.

He swung her up over one shoulder and Essa didn’t bother protesting. The sooner they got out the sooner Fin and Bethany could commence with the lovey-dovey bullshit, and she might hate the day, but Maker knew she didn’t begrudge either of them what they were finding together.

“Bag’s on her bed?” Garrett asked.

“Yes,” Fin nodded and Essa craned her neck to mock glare at him. She’d get creative with the payback, she decided. His impenitent grin suggested he knew it too.

“There are cookies in there,” Bethany sighed.

“Are they heart-shaped?” Essa asked, lifting up enough to narrow her eyes at Bethany.

“They are.” The exasperation in her voice didn’t quite hide her mirth. “But I put really snarky conversations on them.”

“Did you now?” Garrett pinched Essa’s ass and she launched one heel back towards his face. He caught her foot, pinched her again.

“Like what?” Essa asked.

“Most of them just say ‘Assholes’.” Bethany laughed helplessly. “A few say Fight Me.”

Essa laughed. “I’ll bring you half-priced flowers tomorrow, Beth.”

She squealed suddenly, tucked in close against Garrett’s back so that she didn’t crack her head on the door casing as he swept into her bedroom. Garret grabbed her bag off the bed, pivoted fast enough that she pinched a bruise on his side.

“Yes,” Bethany agreed mildly as her brother swore. “You will. Both of you.”

“Happy Kissing Day, Bethany.”

Garrett bent, presumably to kiss his sister’s cheek, Essa couldn’t see. She looked around for Fin, found him standing at the mantle lighting candles.

“By the Mabari,” Essa swore. “Is Fin wearing a suit?”


	6. Sixteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This Kissing Day fluff is from Acts of Reclamation, post-trespasser. I really wanted to write Cullen with Hope and it occurred to me that most of our Kissing Day Kid Fluff would be with smaller kids. So have some silly teenager teasing and Cullen coping with the girls in his life growing up. Cullen, Essa, Hope. Total fluff. 2k words

“Be careful,” Hope said quietly, sliding a small, heart-shaped card across the kitchen table. Nadie’s signature was bold, letters curving. The dot over the i looked suspiciously like a heart.“She’s half in love with you, Cullen, and she feels guilty about it.”

Cullen looked up from a breakfast of Kissing Day cookies, eyes rounding in surprise. “I’m sorry?”

The cookies, along with a beautiful drop-stitch scarf in Inquisition red, were a gift from Nadie and the first in five years that he wasn’t certain he should accept. The cook’s daughter—then no more than twelve—had been one of his first friends at Skyhold. She and Essa’s daughter were of an age, and they had become fast friends even with time and distance often separating them. Cullen and Nadie had been much the same. Even after Ola had moved her and her daughter back to the rebuilt village of Haven, they had all kept in touch. Nadie loved Essa nearly as much as she loved him.

“She’s…what?”

Hope smiled in sympathy, settled down on the bench beside him, elbows dropping to the table. It was early yet, and the kitchen was still warm and filled with the scents of baking things from the night before. A pot of apple butter had been simmering in the low-burning fireplace for nearly two days. Cullen should have had some on a scone, but the cookies were a treat he hadn’t thought he should resist.

“Half-in love with you,” Hope repeated sagely. “She loves you too so that makes in harder.”

They had only celebrated Kissing Day for the past two years, but the Kirkwallian holiday that Essa insisted was rubbish had meshed too easily with Honnleath’s Harvest Festival. Everywhere Cullen looked there were hearts and apples and pumpkins and spice. He had caught Essa shimming into a red breastband that morning. She had tossed him a cheeky grin before pulling on a thick black sweater, outwardly eschewing the romance of the day.

Cullen dropped his head to his hands. He was beginning to think Essa had the right of it.

“She’s just turned sixteen,” Hope reminded him as if that explained all, as if she weren’t at the end of fourteen herself, but far older and wiser than her friend.

She probably was, Cullen thought.

“She doesn’t _want_ you,” she added. “Wouldn’t take you from Essa. Not that she could.”

Hope shrugged, plucked a cinnamon sugar cookie from the plate before him and took a bite.

“And if she could,” Hope continued cheerfully. “She’d tell one of us who’d know where to hide the body.”

Cullen gaped at her and Hope snickered. But for her father’s green eyes, she looked so much like her mother. Same square jaw and freckled nose, an obstinate chin beneath lips quick to smile. She was easy around people, quick to love and friendship. They had her adopted parents to thank for that. There was some of her aunt’s quiet grace in her hands and her carriage, but she had Essa’s sense of humor. She had just alluded to his infidelity and subsequent murder without batting an eye. Cullen didn’t bother protesting.

“She’s a child,” he sputtered instead.

“Not for much longer. Or so she thinks.” Hope took another bite of her cookie. “We grow up, you know.”

He did know. Cullen had only known Hope for four years, but in some ways she had spoiled him, her parents and Essa as well. Pryn and Erik insisted that she had always been uncommonly self-possessed; her personality had changed very little into adolescence. She had nearly eaten them out of house and home in the summers she spent with them, but she hadn’t mooned over boys or girls her age, had never been prone to bouts of moody, unpredictable adolescence.

“Nadie can’t be in love with me.”

Cullen ran one hand through his hair in worry and agitation, rubbed hard at the tension gathering at the nape of his neck.  He’d have to let her down gently he supposed.

“Men.” The huff was infinitely older than Hope should have been. She shook her head. “You’re already thinking about what you should say to reject her without breaking her heart.”

“Well, of course I am,” Cullen stood up from the bench, paced helplessly down the length of the long kitchen table.  “I don’t want to—“

“What?” Hope snorted, laughter dancing bright as cut emeralds in her eyes. “Lead her on? She suffers no such illusions.”

There was a bit of Essa’s haughtiness in the assurance. Cullen wrinkled his nose at Hope and she giggled, the sound bright and young and tangling at odds with her wisdom.

“Even as pretty as you are.”

She said ‘pretty’ as if she were trying very hard not to hold his looks against him. Cullen turned at the fireplace, strode back toward her with a scowl.

“You _just_ told me to be careful!” Now she was telling him to do nothing?

“Hope!”

There was fond exasperation in Essa’s voice. Cullen looked up to find her leaning in the kitchen doorway. The sun was rising behind her, autumn fire gilding the sky and burnishing the dark tumble of her hair. She was holding a basket of apples tucked to her hip, the end of her arm clamping the handle tight against her side. She had adjusted more quickly than the rest of them to losing her hand and most of her arm. It was so like her, but he couldn’t quite help marveling.

“What did you to Cullen this time?”  She had caught him looking, smiled with gentle understanding. It had been nearly a year now, Essa had always been patient with those she loved.

“I told him about Nadie.” Hope, as always, was utterly remorseless. Cullen suspected she had gotten that from at least two of her parents.

“And I’m guessing you’ve been drawing the telling.” Essa stepped into the kitchen, closing the back door with her foot. Hope lifted her cheek for a kiss and Essa obliged, lips smacking loudly on Hope’s cheek. “Just to make him squirm.”

“Ew,” Hope scrubbed hard at her skin with the heel of one palm. “That was slobbery.”

“That was from Cacique,” Essa smiled, bending closer to nuzzle Hope’s head. “That was from Geri.”

“I like Geri better,” Hope giggled. “Don’t tell Cacique I said that.”

She reached up, caught Essa’s face in her hands and kissed her mother on first one cheek, then the other. “That’s from me.”

Cullen watched Essa’s eyes sink soft and quiet. She would never take for granted the gift of her daughter’s love. Hope had parents, a mother and father who loved her more than all, and she loved them too, claimed them first in her heart. But that didn’t mean, Hope was oft to explain to those who had trouble understanding, that she didn’t have room for Essa and Diarmont and Cullen.

It still surprised him how easily he was included.

“You’ll have to get your own from Cullen,” Hope said, adding a final kiss to Essa’s wrinkling nose.

Essa turned to him, lips pursed, eyes filled with love and laughter, no small amount of gentle mocking. She and Hope liked teaming up against him, and he would have been lying if he didn’t admit how much he enjoyed their teasing.

“Cullen is a little upset right now.” He informed them both, folding his arms over his chest and affecting a glower. “What am I supposed to do about Nadie?”

He hadn’t seen her since the summer. She had sent the gift ahead of her with Hope, but Nadie and her mother—along with half the village and his and Essa’s family—would begin arriving within the next few hours. Soon the farm would be filled with revelry. Cullen enjoyed having those he loved near, but it was always exhausting for him and Essa. He worried enough about saying or doing the wrong thing in such large gatherings.

“You,” Essa placed her basket on the table, walked toward, fingers dancing along the heavy oak. “Are going to treat Nadie as you always do.”

She stopped close to his side, the toes of her boots framing one of his. Her sweater hung from her shoulders, and over-sized tunic with mismatched sleeves that he had knitted for her a month ago. There was a scar along her collarbone, he was thinking seriously of kissing it when Hope feigned one of Cassandra’s disgusted grunts.

Cullen glared at Hope. “Then why tell me?”

If there was nothing he could do, why warn him to be careful? Cullen one hand through his hair again. Essa reached up, brushed a curl back from his forehead with lingering fingers. Cullen glared at her too for good measure.

“Because,” Hope informed him blithely. “Braden Masterson is coming all the way from Redcliffe to dance with her tonight. He’s of a mind to court her, and Nadie wants him to.”

He didn’t ask who Braden Masterson was nor how he knew Nadie in the first place. That was a conversation to have with Ola.

“If you could be just a little less…” Hope flicked her fingers at him, scattering cookie crumbs across the table.

“A little less what?” Cullen demanded, completely offended.

“Sweet?” Essa offered. She slipped her arm around his waist, fingers skimming beneath the hem of his tunic. Her palm was warm, a steadying weight against his back. She placed a kiss on his frowning lips.

“That.” Hope nodded.

“How—?”

He wasn’t quite certain what he had been about to ask. Essa wasn’t through. She stretched up, body snug against his as she kissed him again.

“Dashing?”

They were having far too much fun at his expense; Cullen refused to kiss her back.

Essa’s balance shifted on a misstep and Cullen gathered her close automatically, arms tight around her waist.

“Predictable,” she suggested next, lips twitching with mirth as she punctuated the adjective with another kiss he refused to return.

“That too,” Hope laughed. “Don’t forget brooding.”

“I do not brood!”

His wife’s eyes were filled glee. She pursed her lips, rubbed them lightly against the scruff on his cheek.

“Commanding.”  Essa drawled softly, drawing the word out beneath his ear.

“And that,” Hope said drily. She picked up another cookie. “Are you through?”

Maker’s breath, she had better be. Cullen was having a difficult time remembering that he was supposed to be pouting with her. With them both come to that.

“Not even close.” Essa lifted up on her toes, hair falling forward to tickle his neck as she placed a warm, slightly open kiss to the scar on his lip. “Brilliant,” she whispered. “Stubborn.”

She had a way of making his flaws seems like precious attributes. Cullen fought valiantly to hold onto his disapproving frown.

“Kind.” Essa kissed his chin.

“You already said ‘sweet’,” Hope interjected in a bored tone.

“They’re not the same thing.” Essa nibbled at his bottom lip. Cullen redoubled the severity of his glower, clung to that stubbornness she had been praising. “Loyal.”

She kissed him again. Warmer, slower. “Patient.”

“Well now I just sound like a mabari,” he groused, hauling her up against him and kissing her soundly.

“Some of my favorite people are mabari,” Essa retorted smartly. “You’d make a fine one.”

Cullen kissed her neck while she was talking, rubbed his nose against the sudden leap of her pulse. Essa pinched him for his trouble and he grinned.

“A fine mabari!” Hope chortled. “Oh, please, Cullen, _please_ lick her. Or hold her there and I will.”

She rubbed her cheek with her hand, her mother’s offense not forgotten.

Essa’s eyes rounded. “Don’t you dare.”

Cullen glanced around her to Hope, jostled Essa lightly in his arms, stalling, letting her think she was safe from retribution.

“Is there anything else I shouldn’t do with Nadie?”

“Braden’s bringing her a gift,” Hope’s smirk was the image of her mother’s. “Yours can’t be better than it.”

He dropped his forehead to Essa’s shoulder with a groan. “I made her a hat. It has a heart on it.”

“Not bad,” Hope mused. “A little childish. So it should work.”

“Childish?” Cullen lifted his head, dutifully ignoring Essa’s quivering lips. “I made you one that matched!”

“Second best Kissing Day gift you could give me,” Hope returned pertly.

She glanced meaningfully at Essa and Cullen chuckled.

“Just this once.”

He dragged the flat of his tongue along Essa’s neck while she squealed and put on a very good show of struggling to get away. Hope’s giggles turned to snorting guffaws and Essa clung to him swearing, the glad sounds filling the kitchen as surely as the dawn.


	7. A Bit of Clever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> saibrarutherford prompted me from an autumn cozy prompt list that I can’t find. /cries. It was for Cullen and Sera friendship fluff though and for knitting so here you go.

“Oi!” Sera said, staring somewhat past the gleaming tips of her knitting needles to glare cross-eyed at Cullen. “If you don’t find another way to explain that, Jackboot, I’m going to stick these pointy bits somewhere you don’ want.”

Her chin jutted forward menacingly, but the needles stayed in her hands, long thin fingers held at odd angles, elbows akimbo. Given Sera’s nimble fingers, he had expected her to take to the needles as she did to her knives, but instead her entire body seemed to contort around the long, steel instruments. At this point, they were lucky that they were each only mildly injured. Essa had warned him to use the rosewood instead.

“Later,” Cullen offered, knowing the concession would only annoy her more. “If you’ve really a mind to.”

Sera frowned and Cullen took a deep breath, feigning barely checked exasperation so she wouldn’t notice the smile teasing the corner of his lips. They had been at it all evening. Sera’s spindly limbs were sprawled across the sofa in his and Essa’s office, her feet propped on Cullen’s leg, a basket of yarn between them. He still didn’t know where she had come by the skeins, or what had possessed her to buy them. The wool was thin and silky. Beneath a skilled hand it would knit up as fine as ring velvet, but Sera’s hands were untutored and in the four years since Cassandra first taught him to knit, Cullen had only once worked with such a difficult yarn.

“If you tell me what you want—” He reached to carefully correct a stitch while she snarled at him for his trouble. In the last hour of instruction Sera had managed to cast on and knit exactly two rows. She’d had to undo her work twice now, and had summarily threatened his tender bits each time. “—I could make it for you.”

The yarn she had brought to him wasn’t forgiving. A soft cornflower blue shot through with iridescent threads, it shimmered in the candlelight, shone like a summer morning glittering with dew and trapped in spidersilk.  

“Nope.” She elbowed him hard in the arm, waving the needles at him in emphasis. “Gotta do it myself. You said you’d teach me.”

There was a mulish glint in her eyes, but there was uncertainty too.  He wasn’t used to seeing doubt in Sera’s face, not since she and Dagna found each other.

“I did.” Cullen rubbed the back of his neck with one hand, more habit now than to ease tension he only intermittently carried these days. “It would help if you told me just what it is we are making.”

Sera stuck her tongue out at him. “Are you daft?” she demanded, not bothering to wait for him to answer. She held those pitiful rows up for him to see. “It’s a scarf.”

Well, he thought, maybe it would be.

“Yes,” Cullen said patiently. “But what kind of scarf? A long narrow scarf, a short, square scarf?”

Maker help him if she wanted an irregular shape. Teaching her to increase and decrease might prove dangerous for both of them.

“A _pretty_ scarf,” Sera huffed, painstakingly wrapping the yarn around the end of one needle. “Like that bit o’ starlight you made Es back at Skyhold.”

Oh. Cullen ran one hand through his hair. “The silver one.”

“Yeah the silver one.” Sera scowled. “You ever make her anything else so fine as that?”

They both knew he hadn’t. Essa tended toward sturdy cottons. Thick pieces that would survive both her and a good washing. The silver scarf he had made for her the winter before they decided to take a chance on one another had been something else entirely. Something sheer as gossamer and tenuous as his hopes. She had worn it as a veil on their wedding day, dreams spun real and perpetual on a beautiful Summerday.

“No,” Cullen admitted, placing his hands over Sera’s, pulling her closer beside him so he could guide her work better. “I never did make her anything else so fine as that.”

She nodded shortly, followed his fingers with jerky movements, the clack of the needles setting another stitch in place.

“She still got it?” Sera asked, resisting his wordless correction on the next stitch.

“She does.” Cullen tried again, nudged her more subtly this time. “And that puzzle box you and Dagna worked up for her.”

“Gonna need something more clever than that for widdle,” she mused, lip caught between her teeth, hands sharp as she finally conceded to Cullen’s suggestion. She finished the stitch, paused with her fingers between his, tension suddenly shivering beneath her skin as she clutched at him. “Es says I should ask her.”

Cullen smiled. “If you want,” he added.

Sera nodded. “I do want.” She exhaled loudly, a short burst directed upward by a pouting bottom lip and ruffling her bangs. “Was it hard for you?”

“No,” Cullen chuckled. “Honestly, it just slipped out.”

Sera’s face scrunched up and he knew she was about to make him regret the turn of phrase.

“Breathe before you choke on it, Cully Wully,” she snorted, laughter crowing higher when Cullen’s face turned red. “That’s what he—!”

“Don’t.” But Cullen was already laughing.

“—said!” Sera sputtered, body rocking with levity.

Cullen moved the needles before she wound up poking one of them in the eye.

“Or is it ‘she’?” she gasped, slapping him on the arm. “I’m never certain with you—“

“Sera, please.”

She was nearly lying across his lap, struggling for air between guffaws. Cullen added a bit more glower than he really meant just to hear her snicker again.

“Jackboot?” Sera murmured suddenly, all laughter halting with jarring abruptness.

“Yes, Sera?”

She ducked her head once, turned her face toward what meager shadows remained in a room lit for needlework. Firelight danced bright across her cheekbones, glimmering amid the touch of fear in her eyes.

“What if she don’t want me forever?”

He couldn’t imagine anyone more perfect for Sera than Dagna, nor for Dagna than Sera, but Cullen knew that wasn’t what she needed to hear.

Cullen nudged her gently with his knee. “Better you find out sooner rather than later, yeah?”

She smiled faintly at the affectation, and Cullen tapped the bottom of her chin with one knitting needle, moved his arm just in time for Sera to cuddle close. He would pay for the affection later, he knew. Probably find something unmentionable in with his unmentionables. Again. She’d threatened more than once tonight as it was.

“It’s real, Buttercup.” He pressed a kiss to her temple, smiled when she feigned a sound of distress. She smelled like beeswax and black powder and the cold cyan searing of Dagna’s enchantments. Her arms were hard bands around his waist.

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

Sera glanced up at him, chin sharp on his chest. She blinked hard for a moment. “She tells me no, and I’m moving in here with you two.”

Cullen laughed. “She won’t say no.”


	8. Of Kissing Days Past and Present

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> halfblood-fiend asked for this prompt: Ooohhh I gotta get started on these too, but Essa and Bull/Jack-o-lanterns for the Autumn prompts? That sounds like it could be fun. :D 
> 
> And well, I love hanging out with Essa and Bull. I never know what these two are going to get into. Fluff. There are Chargers in here too. :)
> 
> This is part of the Noir AU, the Garrett x Essa Happily Ever After track and falls about six weeks after Garrett returns to Kirkwall. (and yes, I've placed it ahead of Love Lines & Courage which is in somewhat chronological order now).

“Andraste’s sweet mabari…”

The wind was crisp, fire-tinged and crackling with autumn. The sun was just rising over Kirkwall and the cool air carried little of the stench from Lowtown. It was far, _far_ too fine a morning for Essa’s breathless horror. She leaned weakly against the Iron Bull’s side, one hand pressed to her heart, the other near trembling around her cup of coffee.

“Do you see…?”

Essa closed her eyes, hoping the scene before her would reorganize itself into some sort of logical sense when she opened them again. Bull slipped an arm around her waist, held her companionably if without much hope of comfort.

He let out a low whistle. “That’s a lot of pumpkins, boss.”

“Where do you want ‘em, dollface?”

The delivery man—Pete something or other, Essa wasn’t opening her eyes quite yet to read the logo on the door of his rusted out farm truck—seemed utterly without mercy. He wasn’t giving her any time to process the magnitude of what lay before her.

“Are you certain this is the Hawke order?” she asked, still too stunned to give him the grief he deserved for that drawling epithet.

She took a deep breath, opened her eyes to stare through the wooden side rails of the truck. Pete ran dull green eyes over the top page on his clipboard, pulled a short stub of yellow pencil down from the curve of one ear.

“Signed it herself,” he said, circling two impossibly large numbers and Bethany Hawke’s bold, illegible signature before showing them to her, lips twitching with unrestrained glee. “Unblemished, perfectly white, delivered no later than seven am today.”

He ticked each item off against a chipped front tooth, held the pencil out to her.

“You gotta sign for ‘em.”

Essa shook her head. “Not yet I don’t.” Maker, preserve her. She was going to kill Bethany. “Not until I’ve made certain they are in fact unblemished and perfectly white.”

Pete scowled at her, but Essa was too busy staring into the back of the truck to give him much notice.

“Bull?”

“Yeah, boss?”

“There’s no way we’re getting through all of these pumpkins.” She pulled herself upright, straightened her sweater with a sigh. “There must be six dozen.”

“Five dozen,” Pete corrected. “Not counting the two crates of little ones in the front.”

He jerked his thumb back toward the cab of the truck.

“Little ones?” Essa asked in a small voice.

“Yep. Not much bigger than a fist.” He closed his fingers tight, then glanced at the Iron Bull. “Well, yours and mine anyway.”

Essa nodded in absent agreement. “What are the little ones for?”

“Centerpieces,” Pete said with a shrug. “These Hightown ladies like to nestle them in amid candles and flowers and such.”

He smirked. “You got those coming too don’t you?”

“We do.” She couldn’t quite keep the whimper from her voice. “Bull?”

“Yeah, boss?” He was fighting—admirably she thought—to hold back his laughter.  

“Call for backup,” Essa sighed in defeat.

“You’re going to owe him,” Bull warned.

She was, and Andraste, help her, she had no one to blame but herself.

“I should have known not to bet against him over his own sister.” Not that she planned on being such a graceful loser when Garrett called in his due. Of course, these days even when she lost, she won. “By the mabari.”

Essa shook her head in wonder. “What sane woman needs this many pumpkins?”

“This is gonna be some party,” Bull replied.

*

_Some party_ was a bit of an understatement if the deliveries to the estate were any indication. Except for Cari and Bethany’s weddings, Essa couldn’t remember ever seeing so many for one private event. The first round of florists showed up the same day as the pumpkins, bringing dried arrangements of bright autumn leaves and wreaths of bay and grape vine. The cut flowers wouldn’t arrive until late the next day, vases spelled to preserve freshness throughout the weekend. Or so Bethany cheerfully informed a groaning Essa when she checked in with them later that morning.

“This,” Essa said, waving one pumpkin smeared hand at the Chargers sprawled across Bethany and Fin’s back patio.  “Is not what I signed on for.”

They had been working for hours now, gutting pumpkins and tracing designs on the outside from the half dozen templates Essa had brought with her. While their help was greatly appreciated, they were far more enthusiastic about the impending festivities than Essa was. They had been singing bawdy Kissing Day songs all morning. She wasn’t sure it was worth the trade.

“I hate this holiday,” Essa muttered.

She was elbow deep inside a large white pumpkin; Grim had already taken a picture for posterity. Sera didn’t know it yet, but she had a new nickname.

“You don’t really,” Bull said, putting down his knife and shaking an impressive handful of pumpkin guts to the newspaper beneath him.

A round of agreement bubbled up from the rest of the Chargers, various damning offenses to prove Bull’s argument, among which was the current project which had come about only because the year before Essa had caved some white pumpkins with a lacy design for Bethany’s Kissing Day brunch. She had done it to cheer her friend up. It was the second Kissing Day that Garrett hadn’t come back to Kirkwall and Essa and Fin had known that his absence was weighing on her.

“My love for Bethany eclipses my hatred of this wretched holiday.” She glared up at Krem who was still staring slack-jawed at the daunting number of pumpkins Essa was going to have to carve–or supervise the carving of–in the next two days.  “Don’t tell her I said that.”

Krem laughed softly. “I’m pretty sure she knows.”

“And that she’s an extortionist,” Dalish added, tapping a pattern of perforations on the surface of her pumpkin with a hammer and ice pick.

“Right on both counts,” Essa sighed.  “I guess I can’t blame her for this year being a bigger deal than last year.”

Bull made a noncommittal grunt, but they all knew why Bethany was going over the top with her annual Kissing Day celebration. Her brother had left Kirkwall five years before, returning only for weddings, births, and major holidays, but the last three years he had stayed away sending gifts and letters and apologies in his stead. Bethany claimed she understood, and maybe she did, but there was no doubt that this year she was happy to have Garrett home where he belonged.

“What about you, boss?” Bull asked innocently enough that Essa missed his insinuation.

“What about me?” She pulled out a handful of pumpkin seeds and cold wet squish, nose wrinkling in a grimace. She was going to smell like pumpkin for a month.

“You doing anything special for Kissing Day this year?”

His lips twitched slightly, and this time Essa had to pretend she didn’t catch his meaning. She shot him a glare when she didn’t think anyone else was looking.

“ _I_ …” Essa picked up a heavy knife, weighing it in one hand with what she could only hope was subtle menace; Bull smirked.

“…am carving pumpkins for the next two days,” Essa continued. “And trying to figure out how I’m going to pay you and your crew for helping me.”

There were some suggestions from the Chargers. One surprisingly bawdy one from Rocky. Essa winged a brow at him, surprised to find her cheeks heating. She had been contemplating a similar Kissing Day scenario with another partner.  Not that she was telling any of them that.

“Well, it _is_ Kissing Day,” Rocky shrugged. “And rumor has you made some questionable choices last year. Figured I’d toss my hat in in case you wanted to make some more.”

“Bull!” Essa’s face was flaming now. She snapped a glare across the patio, and flung a handful of pumpkin guts in retaliation for his obvious betrayal.

“Hey!” Bull barely dodged in time, landing heavily on one elbow. He righted himself with a groan and held up both hands, the indignation in his eye somewhat contradicted by the broad smirk on his lips. “I didn’t tell ‘em.”

“Ha!” Skinner leapt to her feet, a wicked smile curving her lips, eyes dancing bright with satisfaction. “I told you. Pay up.”

Essa watched in horror as Grim, Rocky, and Dalish all began fishing in their pockets for whatever they owed.

“I thought you had more sense,” Dalish sighed.

“Skinner?” Essa could only gape.

“If you didn’t want us all knowing,” Skinner said dryly, wiggling her fingers at their friends. “You should have gone out the back of the club instead of stumbling half-dressed right out the front door the next morning.”

“ _You snuck out_?” Bull demanded. He looked genuinely offended. “Wouldn’t have pegged you for the walk of shame type, boss.”

He glowered at her and Essa rolled her eyes.

“I’m not.” She flicked another handful of seeds at him in annoyance. “But you were snoring too loud for me to sleep and you’re a fucking bed hog. My head was killing me. It was go home or kill you.”

There was sympathetic laughter and Essa was helpless to do anything but join in. It wasn’t as if she was exactly ashamed of having spent one slightly drunken night with one of her best friends. She had learned—too late in some cases—that sex wasn’t something she could indulge in without a strong emotional connection to her partner, but that didn’t mean she had to be in love. She and Bull were close, and she had been celibate long enough at that point that the comfort of a good friend had been exactly what she needed.

“You scurried out of there pretty fast,” Skinner mused, tapping her knife against her teeth. “Chief must not have done quite right by you if you were walking that well.”

She might have imagined it, but Essa thought Bull’s grey complexion paled. It had been a onetime thing, but neither of them had ever had cause to regret it until today. Bull clutched his chest as if wounded and Essa snickered.

“Well you know…” she was moving before finished the taunt. “He’s not as young as he used to be.”

Essa squealed as a spectacular handful of pumpkin gore arced across the bright morning. She rolled fast—though not quite fast enough, her boots were spattered—and scrambled to her feet as Bull reached into his pumpkin for another round of ammunition.

“And,” she continued mercilessly, darting behind a laughing and protesting Krem on the off chance that Bull wouldn’t malign his dear second in command. “We had consumed a _lot_ of Kissing Day spirits.”

Essa lifted one finger, was about to make a drooping motion when Bull roared in outrage. Krem darted sideways, grin wide and open over a braying guffaw as he left Essa at the mercy of Bull’s charge.

“You impugn my honor, woman!”

He hit her gently, all things considered, but Essa still would have fallen if he hadn’t caught her in his arms. Bull’s hands spanned her waist easily, and he tossed her high enough into the air that she lost her breath. When she landed safely in his arms, Essa clung to him with pumpkin covered hands and cursed him soundly.

“Don’t do it, boss.”

Her heart was still pounding in her throat. She hadn’t quite come up with proper retribution, but now she smiled.

“Don’t do what?”

Her grin turned a little mean as she smeared goo across his head. The Chargers cheered her on, laughter echoing like thunder off of Bethany’s garden walls.

“You gonna tell him?” Bull pitched the question beneath the din, shrugged easily with one shoulder as he held her with the other arm. “I just wanna know, so I know.”

“Tell who–?”

He stopped her with a look. She and Garrett weren’t ready to tell anyone that they were back together. Truth be told, they were still being cautious with one another, and they were enjoying sneaking around and pretending that they were “just old friends” and “coworkers.” But Essa should have known Bull knew. There wasn’t enough sneaking in the world to get by him.

“Anyone else know?” she asked with a sigh.

“Probably Varric.” Bull eased her feet to the ground. “Not our story to tell though.”

Essa snorted. “As if that’s ever stopped Varric.”

She stood for a moment, hands on the rolled up sleeves of his shirt.

“As for you and me…” She jerked her chin toward their laughing friends. “They all know, and I’m not really the type to keep secrets.”

“He won’t care,” she added. In case Bull was uncharacteristically worried. 

“Didn’t figure he would, or you wouldn’t be with him.”

Truth there. Essa couldn’t abide jealousy. She stretched up on tip toes, pulled Bull down to place a kiss on his forehead. “You’re a mess by the way.”

Bull patted her on top of the head with handful of seeds and pumpkin string.

“So are you.”


	9. A Bit of Steam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So after the last Kissing Day piece there were some calls for Essa and Bulls night together. Here's a peek. NSFW. The Iron Bull and Essa, friends with benefits. 
> 
> This sorta drunken Kissing Day tryst falls in the Noir AU, during the three and half years after Cullen and Essa broke up and before Garrett returned to Kirkwall.

“Boss…”

“I’ve told you already, Bull, you keep calling me ‘boss’ and none of this is happening.”

Essa was sprawled naked across his bed, skin still tanned from a summer at the shore glowing faintly against black sheets. She hadn’t stopped giggling for the last half hour and her breasts—some of the finest he had ever seen—were shaking with glorious laughter. He hadn’t expected for her to be a playful lover, but he supposed he should have. She smiled when she fought. Stood to reason she’d laugh when she fucked.  

Bull’d had worse partners, and at this rate it wouldn’t matter how good the actual sex was, she’d be in his top twenty. He hadn’t laughed so hard or felt so light in years.

“I think we’re blurring the lines of consent enough as it is,” she continued sagely, waving her empty wine glass between the two of them before reaching back to set it on the nightstand. He didn’t bother hiding his appreciation for the arch of her body, and she preened at little extra when she caught him watching. “Without adding unequal power dynamics to this whole mess.”

“Unequal…?” Bull chuckled, slapped her lightly on the flaring curve of one hip. There weren’t many who could match him in force of personality, but Essa Trevelyan was definitely one of them. “We were sober when we got started.”

He scratched lightly down the outside of her thigh, watched as faint welts rose up behind his fingers. Essa’s giggles bubbled into a moan. He already knew she liked a little intensity, how much and how close to pain he didn’t yet know, but she was honest in her reactions, it wouldn’t take long to find out.

“And I’ll stop calling you ‘boss’ when you stop calling me ‘chief’.”

Bull placed an openmouthed kiss to the curve behind her knee watched as the glimmer of merriment in her eyes gave way to rising lust. He had never thought they’d end up here, but now that they were it seemed inevitable. Fucking wasn’t really that different from going a few rounds in the ring and Essa had been running hotter than usual lately. They had shut the nightclub doors an hour ago behind the last of a Kissing Day afterparty before indulging in a well-deserved whiskey or two in the quiet that followed. Tonight, they had both needed to let off a little steam. They were candid enough with one another that the offer of a round on the mats had flowed with surprising ease to few rounds in the sheets.

Bull wasn’t complaining; he would make damn sure she didn’t have anything to complain about either.

Essa lifted up on her elbows, stared down her body to meet his gaze. He didn’t blame her, it was a damn fine view. She was hard muscle beneath ample curves, a retired fighter who couldn’t stay out of the gym but wasn’t giving up pasta.  He liked that he didn’t have to be too careful with her. She had no few bruises on her body as it was, some had come from a sparring match with Krem earlier in the week.  Bull had already asked about leaving marks on her during sex and she’d cheekily assured him that if she didn’t like where his mouth was he would know it.

He believed her. And wasn’t that a gift in itself?

“You’re going to make this weird aren’t you?” She narrowed her eyes, reached up to shove back the wild tumble of her dark hair. “You’ve got this look…”

She brushed gentle fingers beside his eye.

“You were ogling me earlier,” he reminded her, turning into that knowing touch.

He nibbled a kiss to her knuckles, nuzzled into her hand to scrape his teeth against her palm. The breathy sigh of her exhale teased spiced wine past his cheek.

“I was.”

Essa was observant, always had been. She saw more than most people were comfortable with, didn’t mind calling them on their shit. He liked that about her too. Needed more like her in his life. When she looked at him, he felt more than a little naked.

The good kind.

“Probably got that same fond look in my eyes when I did it too,” she groused.

“You did.”

He turned back to her leg and bit down on the inside of her calf, gently at first, then harder as breath and sarcasm stuttered behind her teeth.

“By the mabari,” Essa gasped. “Do that again.”

Bull placed a kiss over the blunt marks his teeth had left behind then sucked lightly at her skin, watching her face for signs of pleasure or ticklishness. She was quick to both and it seemed the same touch could elicit either. He liked the sound of her laughter–it rang bright and brash through his usually quiet apartment–but it wasn’t what he was after just now.

“Later,” he promised.

He ran his palms up the insides of her thighs, spread her legs slowly as he knelt between them. She squirmed a little, eyes falling shut, but she wasn’t hiding. Essa reached for him, nails rough against his trousers. He was still wearing most of his tuxedo, knew exactly the effect an undone tie and a partially unbuttoned shirt had on her. She had told him more than once that she had a type; he didn’t mind playing to her fantasies tonight.

“Are you going to hit me if I tell you how hot you look like this?”

Essa didn’t like being told she was beautiful. She loved her body, was more comfortable in her skin than anyone else Bull knew, but her features were too sharp for such soft platitudes and she bore them particular disdain.

“Nah.” Her lips curved in a soft smile. “I knew you were an ass man.”

She shimmied at him, hips moving between his waiting palms.

“So I believe you.”

He caught that ass in both hands when she giggled, gripped her just shy of too hard until she moaned. Her hands clutched at his legs, breath coming short and fast. Bull dug his thumbs into her hipbones and Essa arched up from the bed with a coarse shout.

“Good?” he asked.

She patted his knee with limp fingers and he wondered how close to climax that simple touch had been for her.

“More than good,” she whispered breathlessly. “Fuck, Bull.”

“We’ll get to that too if you want.”

He lifted her slowly, waited for her eyes to flash open. Her gaze found his through the late night gloom and he watched her pulse beat hard in the slender curve of her throat.

“Bull?”

The first touch of nerves skittered across the smoke of her eyes. He didn’t look away as he lowered his head. When his lips brushed the curls above her sex she startled.

“Essa.” Bull waited, hands stroking her hips gently as he watched her thoughts chase each other across her face. She was considering if she still wanted what he had offered, and the last thing he wanted to do was rush her.

“It’s been a while for me,” she said finally, not quite looking at him.

“I know.” He could smell her arousal and her skin was all but twitching beneath his palms. He doubted it would take much to send her over, but they weren’t going anywhere she didn’t want to go. “We go slow as you want, boss. Stop when you want.”

He lowered her back to the bed and she made a little sound of distress.

“Or we can stop right here.”

“No.” Essa shook her head quickly, smiled faintly when he smirked. “Well, I mean…if you want.”

“I want—“ Bull settled into a more comfortable position on the bed, eased his bum leg out in front of him and rubbed his knee. “–to see how many times I can make you scream.”

Her blush was a thing of beauty. He could count on one hand the number of times he had seen her flush bright and rose, and never had he been in a position to watch that blush move down her entire body. She covered her face with one hand.

“Alright.”

Oh, he was going to tease her about that blush later, he thought. She would think something was wrong if he didn’t.

“Now…” Bull began conversationally. He bent forward, dropped a kiss to her stomach.  “I know what you’re thinking.”

“Do you really?” Her lips twitched and she licked her lips.

He ran two knuckles over damp curls. Essa flinched.

“I might.” He made a sound of wordless praise when her hips lifted, seeking more of his touch. ”You’re too short to hook your legs over my horns.”

“I didn’t—“

“You didn’t, huh?”He stroked the seam of her lips with the tip of one finger, parted them carefully with another. “Fuck, you’re wet.”

Essa groaned and he stroked her lightly, letting her body get used to being touched by another after so long.

“Bull…”

Her hands clenched on his legs and she writhed against him, hips moving in a slow, steady rhythm. Despite the blush still lingering on her cheeks, there was nothing bashful about Essa. He circled her clit with a cautious touch and she bucked against his hand.

“Maybe a foot or an ankle,” he continued quietly. “I mean, you might be a kicker.”

“Dammit, Bull.”

Essa’s hands wrapped around his wrist, palms soft and warm as heath fire as she moved his fingers from her clit, lower, hips lifting to guide his finger inside her.

“Oh, shit…Another. Please.”

Her nails dug into his skin and she spread her legs wider.  

“Don’t stop talking to me,” she ordered softly.

He thrust into her with a low groan, watched the sound travel through her body on a shuddering exhale.  

“Voice kink, huh?”

Essa curled up into the curve of his body, muscles clenching tight around his fingers as she let go of his wrist to take his face in her hands. She was straddling his lap now, his hand trapped between them.  

“Maybe.”

He grinned and she kissed him hard, all teeth and tongue, small breathless sounds as he fucked her with his fingers. Bull cradled the back of her neck with his other hand, urged her back so that he could reach her breasts with his mouth. She hung suspended between his hands, her weight resting on their legs. The muscles in her thighs flexed powerfully as she rode him and for a moment Bull simply watched her.

“You’re fucking beautiful,” he said, stealing her protest with a rough kiss. “You might not believe anyone else, but you’d better believe I mean it.”

She kissed him back, something gentle this time, almost sweet. “I believe you.”

Her orgasm was close. A fine tremble started in her knees, and the steady rhythm they had found between them was faltering on her end. Bull ran his thumb over the pulse at her throat, shifted his other hand enough to do the same to her clit. She shuddered in his arms, head falling back in abandon, chest heaving.

“Fuck.”

Her hands were on her breasts now, fingers pinching hard at her nipples.

“Look at you,” Bull murmured, smiling as she trembled beneath his words.

There was so much he wanted to do with her tonight, but he had to get her through this orgasm first. It was going to take her hard, she was probably going to cry and she’d be pissed about that.

“Bull…” His name was wound tight with need. He leaned over her left breast, took her nipple into his mouth right along with her clenching fingers.

“Oh.” Essa’s breath exploded in a surprised rush. “Yes. Fuck, yes.”

She was so wet now, she was dripping.  Her concentration shattered. She had all but stopped moving against his hands, but her hips were restless and erratic. Bull worked her harder, until the only sounds in the room were her desperate sighs and the soft slick sounds of her body.

“Please, please.”

He circled her clit with the pad of his thumb, pressed hard against her pounding pulse with the other.

“Essa.” He pitched the command low, let a little more gravel into his voice than usual.  “Look at me.”

She obeyed instantly—she might be pissed about that later too, he wasn’t sure yet—her eyes were heavy-lidded and nearly black with pleasure. Bull watched blue spark against the thin rim of smoke, felt the distant draw of her magic rise and then fall as her climax racked through her with a shout.

“Easy.” There were tears in her eyes, and she was still shuddering around his fingers as he laid her back on the bed. “I’ve got you, boss.”

“Dammit, bull.”

She slapped at him with heavy, useless hands, managed to hit nothing but air anyway as her arms flopped back to the mattress. He eased his fingers from her and she made a sound that both revel and regret.

“You alright?” She was swearing at him. He figured it could go either way.

Essa chuckled, reached up to wipe the tears from her cheeks. “You give me shit for crying and I’m going to beat your ass.” She dropped her hand over her heart. “Later.”

Bull laughed. “I wouldn’t.”

“Good.” She lay panting for a moment, lips turned up in a contented smile, but then she surprised him.

Again.

“Thank you.” Essa turned suddenly, cuddled close into the curve of his body. She pulled his arm down over her side and kissed the tips of his still damp fingers.

“Don’t thank me until I’m through with you,” he said gruffly.

“And don’t think,” Essa retorted, voice lazy with post-coital splendor. “That just because I followed one command, you can boss me around.”

She thumped him over the heart with her forehead. “Chief.”

“Ha.” Bull rolled to his back, dragging her with him until she lay sprawled across his chest. “I knew you’d be pissed about that.”

“It was a good move.” She stretched her legs, threw one across his waist. “Now, you were saying.”

“I was…”

Fuck if he knew what he had been saying. Essa reached down, tapped the tip of one horn expectantly. Bull was certain he cracked a few ribs laughing.

“I was saying…you can’t hang from them like a gym bar.” He tsked at her. “I know you’ve been thinking about it.”

“I would never.” She gaped in mock outrage, reached for the buttons of his dress shirt.

“The angle will be all wrong.” Bull’s lips twitched and he leaned up brushed a kiss against her smile, pulled back just before her mouth opened beneath his. “Unless you’re after getting that ass—“

“Bull!” Essa’s face flushed bright with indignation. She fell back on the bed, laughter booming toward the ceiling as she launched a foot at his face. Bull caught her by the ankle, nibbled a tickling line along arch until she squealed.

“So that’s a ‘no’ then?”

“Maybe next year,” she snickered, trying to wrestle her foot away. “If you’re very good the rest of tonight and you haven’t whisked a certain—“

“Uh-huh.” He let go of her foot at the end of a spectacular tug, watched her eyes round wide when she nearly pitched off the bed. “You can tease me about him tomorrow.”

 


	10. Love Lines & Courage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So…for Kissing Day I wrote smut…or at least I tried to. Turns out that a newly reunited Garrett x Essa are fluffy as all heck instead. When I sat down to edit and finish what I’d finally admitted was a fluff arc, I got a third part and smut. I’m sorry? (I’m not sorry). Posted in three parts on tumblr, I saw no real reason to break it up here, even if it is a bit long for a single chapter.
> 
> This falls after the alternate epilogue to More Than Smoke, you know…the one where five years after Smoke Garrett shows back up looking for nothing more than a job and finds all sorts of fluff instead…This is their first Kissing Day after that. Broken into two three parts because the fluff and Kissing Day festivities never wanted to end. :) Garrett Hawke x Essa Trevelyan. A Kissing Day Ball and absolute ridiculousness.
> 
> Lots of fluff. A partially ensemble cast. The end of this gets NSFW.

The Amell Estate in Kirkwall—now renamed the Hawke Family Estate as much to thumb noses at old ghosts as anyone else in Hightown who didn’t think the Hawkes belonged there—was turned out in grand style for Kissing Day. Thick green vines covered the towering brick walls surrounding the property, and in the summer they were sweet with white trumpet shaped flowers. Those leaves had turned with the seasons. They spread now in shades of gold and brown, thin red ribbons now woven among them, gleaming like love lines in the twinkle of a thousand golden faerie lights.

Night was falling as Garrett turned into the drive. His windows were down; the evening was cool enough for pleasure and warm enough for comfort. Roses climbed the open gates, red blossoms thick with scent, growing in such profusion, he could barely see the curling wrought iron behind them. His headlights bounced off of old-growth oaks, limbs dripping with springy grey moss and white lace lanterns. Already, there were countless cars parked on the west lawn and music filled filled the night. The song was old-fashioned, something sweeping and bright  piano just a little wild. Bethany had already given her welcome speech then.

She was going to kick his ass for being late.

He had taken his tux to work last night. To Essa’s, but they were still pretending they worked late on cases as often as they told everyone. Somewhere between here and there and here again, he had misplaced his bowtie. He had spent too long looking for the blighted thing before giving up and simply leaving the top button of his white dress shirt undone. It was a rakish look and it suited him. If Bethany gave him grief he was more than prepared to claim it deliberate than admit he couldn’t keep up with where half his clothes were anymore. He was supposed to be living here with Bethany and Fin and Ester. Little Garrett was on the way, or at least he had better be. Garrett was still miffed that they’d given Essa the firstborn. This one better be named after him.

They had snuck around all summer, feeling out each other and their actual attempt at a relationship. It was one thing to want, another to admit that they wanted, but something else entirely to merge their lives together. They spent more time laughing than fighting and, Andraste’s sweet ass, there was something to be said for stealing kisses–and more–behind their friends’ backs. Varric and Bull knew, of course, but the rest were oblivious, buying with almost insulting ease that Garrett and Essa were simply working together at her investigative firm.

Their first relationship–and he still wasn’t sure that was the right word for what they’d been–had been antagonistic. They had kept their feelings from themselves and each other. He still didn’t know if it had been too much honesty in the end or too little that broke them. Essa thought it was a bit of both. They had both stayed busted up over each other longer than they liked admitting. This time they were being honest from the start.

And the sex was unfuckingbelievable.

Somehow they were even more unapologetic than they had been, back when neither thought they owed the other anything. They knew each other, weren’t afraid to ask how their wants and likes had changed, enjoyed finding the ways they hadn’t. They were both more daring, better at not getting caught, but that only made them court danger with greater devotion. Garrett had never had so much fun.  

A party like this, he thought with a grin as he pulled his car into the shadow of an oak, might be one of the best nights of his life.

Damn if he didn’t miss her. In the past five years he thought he had gotten used to missing her, but this was different. This wasn’t the ache of loss or the knowledge of regret. This was a constant looking forward to seeing her, the anticipation of homecoming. Now they had only been apart for most of the day, and wasn’t that just as ridiculous as it sounded?

Essa had been carving pumpkins for most of the last two days. He saw them now, white lace designs casting patterns of firelight on the wide brick steps leading up to the house. She had been complaining for most of those two days, insisted he would be able to find her just by searching for the woman who smelled like pumpkin and flame.

He was getting tired of living back and forth between her place and his sister’s. And as much fun as it was, he was getting tired of sneaking around. Kissing Day was his favorite holiday and he was enough his father’s son that he wanted to have the woman he loved in his arms at least once tonight. He had–despite his missing bowtie–dressed to that end this evening. He had a red formal scarf draped around his neck, the silk his trademark red and only a shade darker than that most often associated with the holiday. The hand-knotted fringe flirted with the hem of his dinner jacket. There were red spinel cufflinks at his wrists, jewels shining blood bright in the low light, an early Kissing Day gift from Bethany this year, as well as his mask. He wasn’t quite sure why his sister had chosen to throw a masked ball, but he was game and she’d done a fine job picking his out. The frame was light, mounted on a black baton. When held to his face, it covered his forehead, eyes, and the bridge of his nose. This mask itself was a red and black scale, subtle horns peeking above his hairline.

She had been laughing when she gave it to him.

Essa, Garrett knew, would be all in black, not a speck of crimson invitation in sight. She claimed–loudly and often–to hate the day, but still, she loved the spectacle of Bethany’s increasingly dramatic parties. She would be wearing something sinful, all peekaboo drapes and curves, shoes just tall enough to make her a convenient height for dark corners.

Maker’s breath, he loved the woman. Too damn much.

“Have you told her?”

The singsong caught him off guard and Garrett startled. Cole smiled in gentle apology.

“I didn’t just appear,” he said, as if he still had to remind people. Nearly six years in Kirkwall, but Essa said sometimes folks still had trouble adjusting to his nature. “I was standing here when you walked up. Lost in her. Wanting, remembering. Dark tumbling hair. Clever mind, clever mouth. Laughter will always be the color of smoke.”

“Yes, well.”

The kid wasn’t wrong, and Cole nodded sagely in response to the unspoken admission before turning to stare toward the brightly lit windows of the house. The front doors were open wide, and music and light spilling lush and blue out into the press of the evening. Garrett had the feeling Cole was letting him regroup. He swallowed hard, was suddenly glad that his throat was unrestricted.

“I haven’t yet,” he admitted. Until that moment, he had wondered if he needed to. Surely she knew. “You’ll keep this under your hat?”

The young man was uncharacteristically bare headed, though he looked strangely comfortable in a navy suit that didn’t quite fit him.

“She knows,” Cole said, miming hiding something beneath an invisible hat. “But you should tell her.”

Garrett ran one hand through his hair, lifted his mask into place.

“I will.” The words held the weight of a vow and Cole accepted them just as solemnly.

“Good.” His grin flashed quick and sharp as a blade. “She’ll be mad if you do it tonight.”

She would, in fact, never let him hear the end of it. Garrett chuckled.

“Yes, she will.” He reached for Cole’s hand, shook it warmly as he stared in the windows trying to pick Essa out of the glittering crowd. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“You wouldn’t tell me where she is, would you?”

There were so many suits and gowns, most in shades of black and red. Masks ran the gamut of sheer lace to elaborate Orlesian obscurities. Finding her tonight had promised to be half the fun, but Garrett found himself anxious to see her now.

“Uh-uh,” Cole tisked in a cheerful singsong. “That would be cheating.”

*

There were,praise the Mabari, no pumpkin guts in sight. Essa stood beside the backyard fountain—an overly grand sculpture of two dolphins currently spouting pink water toward the starlit sky—sipping Bethany’s signature Kissing Day cocktail from a crystal champagne flute and wishing desperately for a good short of whiskey. The night was perfect, just cool enough that the men weren’t sweating in their tuxedos and the ladies weren’t miserable in their heavily beaded gowns. A chilly breeze flirted through the gardens, nipped sharply enough to encourage warm embraces. Bethany had already made her yearly toast, wishing everyone a night of love so true it would carry them through the year.

Essa had only made one face, and only because Bethany was looking right at her and expecting it.

Bethany Hawke was radiant as always, one hand tucked in the crook of Fin’s arm, the other hand reaching down to hold Ester’s plump fingers. Bethany—eight months pregnant with their second child—wore a floor length gown of red silk chiffon, strapless, with a sweetheart neckline trimmed in crystals. Ester was her mother writ small, elegant somehow for such a fearless toddler. She wore pink, poofy skirt cinched with a wide white sash. She had been the first of the evening to demand a dance with Essa. Fin, even in the tuxedo his wife had to strongarm him into each year, had never looked happier, and Essa would never stop thanking the Mabari, the Maker, anyone who was listening, for the joy he had found. There had been too little love in their childhoods. They had each other, fierce and forever, but this was more. This was better. Fin’s heart was too big to be wasted only on the likes of her, and if there was heart in all of Thedas that could match his, it was Bethany.

It was impossible to muster up her usual disdain for the holiday.

“Careful,” Bull said, slipping up beside her. He took the sugary cinnamon drink from her hand, replaced it with a proper short of whiskey. “Your mask is slipping.”

Essa reached immediately for the elaborate headpiece, fingers ghosting over the pins and ribbons woven into her hair. The beaded monstrosity was heavy, but she’d loved it too much to choose something less cumbersome. Most of the weight was anchored in a knot at the nape of her neck, coiled tight with most of her hair.

“Not that one.” Bull chuckled when she scowled at him. “I still can’t believe you wore red.”

He took advantage of her folly, leaned down to brush a kiss over her lips. Essa kissed him back with a smile.

“I didn’t want to be easily recognized,” she said, stepping back and lifting her drink in a little toast between them. “Thank you for this.”

“Any time, boss.” He reached out, tugged lightly on one of the long curls that spilled over her shoulder. “This is nice.”

Essa rolled her eyes. “You men. Always with the long hair.”

“You wouldn’t have grown it out if you didn’t like it,” he tugged harder and let go, watched with a smile as the curl bounced. “I’m thinking you’ve found it appeals to more than your vanity lately.”

She choked on her whiskey. “Shut up, Bull.”

He pounded her lightly on the back as she coughed and swore at him.

“Now get,” Essa bumped his hip with hers. “Go on before you give me away.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He had taken a single step away when she called him back.

“Bull?”

“Yeah, boss?”

He hadn’t bothered with a mask, his eyebrow lifted with the query. Essa reached up, tugged lightly on the black satin lapel of his white dinner jacket.

“One more for courage?”

He didn’t ask why she needed it, simply caught her around the waist and pulled her up on her toes. She clung to him with one hand, her whiskey with the other, and thanked the Maker for the gifts of her friends, for those who knew and loved and understood her.

“You need more, you come find me.” Bull kissed her soundly, lips firm with laughter and friendship.  “Don’t drown your nerves in whiskey.”

“I wouldn’t,” Essa promised, dropping a kiss on his cheek. She wasn’t as young or foolish as she’d once been. “Thanks, Bull.”

He winked at her as he started off again. “Anytime.”

Essa watched him make his way back toward the house, tossed back her whiskey with far less consideration than the expensive single-malt deserved. A fifty year something, smoky and enduring. Essa set it on the tray of passing waiter in order to resist the temptation of having it refilled at the bar. By the Mabari she was nervous. She didn’t know what had possessed her to make tonight a game between her and Garrett, only that everything usually was and wasn’t that the best part about them anyway? But now that she was here, wearing the most ridiculous dress she could imagine, Essa was nervous. She had promised him a prize if found her before midnight. He was thinking sex and he wasn’t wrong, but she had more planned for the evening than sneaking out into the garden.

Essa wasn’t a fan of Kissing Day, but she knew it was special to him and his family, and well, they were her family too now. So was he. It was past time they stopped hiding that from everyone, past time for him to stop pretending he lived with Bethany and Fin. They worked—and claimed to work—so many nights that he was hardly there anyway, and while some were actually for case work, most were spent curled up on the leather sofa in the den, or tangled up in Essa’s bed. Their bed, she thought fiercely. Andraste’s knickers, they’d gone together three weeks ago and picked out something big enough for them and the dogs to spend Sunday mornings together.

“He’s looking for you.”

Cole appeared just behind her, but Essa didn’t flinch. She also didn’t turn to face him. Had Cole wanted to be seen talking to her, he would have appeared beside her instead.

“He’s here?”

She had spent most of the morning finishing the last of the pumpkins and had gotten dressed upstairs in secret. Only Bull and Fin—whom she’d conscripted to help her with the tiny slick buttons she couldn’t manage—knew her costume. She didn’t know why Bethany had decided this year’s Sweethearts’ Ball would be a masque, but she had to admit she was having far more fun than she should have been.

“Arrived late,” Cole told her quietly. “Couldn’t find his tie.”

“He only just got here?”

She had been looking for Garrett since the first guests began arriving, but in a sea of masks and ubiquitous black tuxedos, she had yet to pick him out. She felt a little better now, knowing he wasn’t there.

“Should I tell you?” Cole asked in confusion.

“No,”  Essa muttered peering through the nearest window.“You know, I’m supposed to make this hard for him.”

The house was exceptionally lovely this year, lights low and golden, candles flickered on every mantle, votives and strings of twinkling bulbs were mixed in with sprawling centerpieces of autumn leaves and deeply hued roses, purples and reds and burgundies gleaming like dark jewels. The air was scented with autumn fire and the last of the season’s apples, sweet cinnamon, vanilla, and spices in so many shades of brown. There were trays of food at every turn. The cookies Bethany and Garrett had baked the nights before were iced bright red and glittering with fine sugar, tucked in clear cellophane packages and tied with ribbons as favors for the guests.

“It is,” Cole offered cheerfully as Essa nearly pressed her nose to the window. “You too.”

“Are you laughing at me, Cole?”

Essa spotted Bethany at the entrance to the dining room. She and Fin were making the rounds among their guests. Ester was dancing with Cullen and Cari at the foot of the main stairs. The Rutherfords were elegant red and white. Too classy for the cover of Varric’s last novel, though that couple had born a striking similarity. Cullen’s white tux was pristine, black tie and vest, the only red on him was the flush of happiness in his cheeks. Cari’s dress was heartstopping. Velvet deep as bloodroses, a wide bow at her throat. Her skirt fell in in heavy folds and Ester was clutching them with one hand, her other lifted to take the two fingers Cullen held down to her. He held Cari lightly with one arm and Essa wondered if she would ever be able to explain to Garrett what a relief it had been to find two hearts she cared for so deeply would care for each other in her stead.

“Sometimes,” Cole said, placing one cool hand on her shoulder. “But not now.”

She waited for the usual litany, her thoughts laid bare and telling. She didn’t mind like most. She had never been much for secrets and those she’d once kept, she had cracked wide years ago.

“I think there are twice as many people as last year,” she commented absently, watching as Bethany sweep Fin to another group.

“Nearly,” Cole agreed. “You think you should mind.”

“Maybe a little,” Essa admitted.

The guest list grew every year—Bethany and Fin’s hearts was too big for it not to—but even with faces and names she didn’t know, Essa still felt the warmth of hearth and home amid the glitz and glamour.

“Are you going to tell me where he is?”

She didn’t actually want to know, but the demand made Cole grin. She spun to face him, reached up to catch him by the cheeks with both palms, knowing she couldn’t surprise him, knowing the affection was always welcome. Her fingers were loose, curling lightly against his jawline.

Cole smiled. “I was going to ask you,” he said, eyes pale and distant. “But I already knew.”

He leaned down, brushed his lips low on her cheek.

“The mask seems true,” he said, thoughtfully.

Essa tugged him down gently, pressed a kiss to his nose.

“Maybe it is.”

*

Where the fuck was Essa? The midnight deadline had been laughable, more jest than expectation, but now that crept steadily closer, he was beginning to worry. Garrett smiled and nodded and tried to remember the last part of the conversation he was currently trapped in. He probably should have said something back by now, but he was too busy searching the crowded floor for Essa. He had believed he would know her anywhere. 

A mask might obscure her face, but he knew her body. Knew every dip and curve and promise. He knew the restrained swagger in her hips when she wore fuck-me shoes, when she couldn’t quite stop exulting in taunting him. He knew how those same hips rolled loose when she was barefooted, easy grace in every step, toes curling lightly. He knew the head tilt of her curiosity, how she carried her shoulders when she was a breath from laughing. He knew how black lace worshiped sun-kissed bronze of her skin, and how satin slithered from breast to waist to hip before falling to the floor. He knew the scars on her knuckles, knew that first stiff step when she’d been sitting too long and her leg was asleep. He thought he could pick her calves out of a lineup, and yet in the past three hours, he hadn’t caught a single glimpse of her.

Kissing Day was nearly over, though Garrett knew Bethany’s party would not start winding down for at least another hour. Still, it wouldn’t be the same, and nevermind that he be catching shit for a month over not finding her. He didn’t know how she had eluded him all night. Bethany’s party was more of a masque than a true costume ball. Masks ranged from simple to elaborate but garb was still mostly formalwear. While he didn’t recognize everyone present, there weren’t many dressed in such away that he would have missed Essa.

And yet, somehow, he had.

Garrett had looked everywhere–subtly at first–letting Bethany introduce him around to her new friends and coworkers. There were also familiar faces he hadn’t seen since he got back–that he had no trouble recognizing, for the record–old friends from down at the gym, regulars from _the Hanged Man._ It seemed Bethany had invited anyone who might want to see him and there were more than he would have expected. To his surprise, he was something of a local celebrity. Garrett hadn’t boxed in years, but people still remembered him. He blamed Varric as much as anyone else, and lost more time than he expected shaking hands and exchanging kisses and well wishes with his fans.

“You have the look of a man who doesn’t want to be here.”

Isabela slipped smoothly between him and an over-exuberant well-wisher, smiled prettily at the young man who was currently regaling Garrett with his old records. She made some flirtatious apology that seemed to only raise Garrett in the boy’s esteem before whisking Garrett across the dining room-turned-ballroom-for the night, and out onto the crowded dancefloor.

“Bela, my love.” Garrett kissed her in gratitude, kissed her again just because he could. Though he had seen her since returning to Kirkwall, he had missed her too. He would be making up to her for his prolonged absence for some time yet. “I can’t thank you enough for rescuing me.”

The music was slow, something grand and classical filled with piano and violin. Garrett pulled her into a waltz, hand high and proper on her back, watched her nose wrinkle in distaste before his fingers wandered over the lace back of her red dress to grope her properly.

“Better,” she chuckled, low and rich. “But I can tell your heart’s not in it. No pity flirting from you, alright?”

“Alright.” He had the grace to look properly abashed, but he didn’t grope her again. “I’m looking for Essa.”

“As if we don’t all know it,” Bela snorted, more sway in her step than was strictly required. “You’ve had nothing but longing in your eyes all night, sugar. That mask hasn’t hidden anything.”

“Well, I can’t say the same about hers,” he groused, stepping her through a corner box before spinning them into a graceful turn.  “I haven’t seen her anywhere.”

He was getting a trifle desperate. He hadn’t asked anyone since Cole, but this was Kissing Day dammit. Before the night was through, he would have kissed half of Kirkwall. The thought of not kissing her before midnight upset him more than it should have.

“I have,” he continued grumpily. “Only a quarter hour left. I must have counted forty lace masks–”

Isabela’s mask was the crimson version of what he had expected to find Essa hiding behind.

“A half dozen mabari masks.” He spun them again and Bela laughed, the sound rising warm and bright toward the low lights above them. “None of them were her. Six horses, Three griffons…”

He shook his head. “I don’t even know how many Grey Wardens.” Garrett sighed. “I’ve started eyeing the suits with suspicion, Bela.”

“As if Essa would willingly pass up an opportunity to dress up.”

She wouldn’t. The woman was all or nothing, happiest lounging on a beach or wearing the finest silk.

“Oh!” Bela’s fingers tightened in his; her breath left her in a startled burst. She  lifted one hand to crimson lips as if to hold back her surprise. “Oh, Garrett.”

He started to turn, to follow the line of her rounded gaze, but Isabela caught his chin in her hand, held him steady as they continued to dance. The floor was crowded, a crush of silk and satin and fine wool, bodies spinning like figures in a dozen music boxes.

“She’s in here?”

He released Bela’s hand, snapped his mask up into place, gaze darting quick and furtive over the crowded floor.

“Shut up,” he grumbled before she could tease him for his haste. He had hoped to find her outside, steal her away for a kiss in the garden, but even Garrett could admit there something to be said for the romance of spotting her first across the dancefloor.

“You’ve been looking for a smoldering brunette in black, haven’t you?” she was grinning now, and his pulse picked up in anticipation. “Dark, dramatic eyes, lace mask.”

“To start with,” he admitted.

They were Essa’s staples. He had a picture of her from the Winter Palace in his wallet, clipped from a newspaper years ago. She had been devastatingly powerful, even in Rutherford’s arms. Bethany had also sent him pictures from her parties over the years. In every single one Essa wore black, satin or lace or velvet.

“I am so glad,” Isabela said slowly, steps changing until she was leading his stumbling feet. “That I’m here to see this.”

She swept them into a turn, one hand spread wide at his hip, the other finally releasing his chin to settle on his arm. Garrett scanned the room as they spun, saw only a sea of elegant couples in black and red. And then–

“Merciful Andraste…”

He could feel Isabela’s laughter, but he didn’t hear her, couldn’t see anything past the center of the dance floor. He had not, in fact, missed Essa all night. He had caught a glimpse of her dancing with Krem earlier, but he had never suspected the vision in white to be her. The gown was too delicate for one thing, layers of gossamer shimmering and ethereal in the candlelight. For another, the mask was too ornate. If she had half her range of vision he would kiss Rutherford at midnight.

“Has she spotted us?” Garrett asked gruffly, following the music into a sweeping turn that took them away from the center of the floor.

Bela’s lips curved, slick and full, as he watched Essa dancing with Fin, tried and failed a dozen times to keep the besotted look from his face. Andraste, preserve him, she was laughing, face lifted beneath the weight of an elaborately beaded mask, silver and white, metal twisted and curving into a dragon’s face. Cole was right, laughter would always be the color of smoke.

“I don’t think so.” She did him the courtesy of not laughing in his face.

“That dress is–”

The tall windowed doors to the veranda were open to the night, flanked on either side by oversized topiaries of red and burgundy roses. A garland of autumn leaves and twinkling lights draped across the open arch, a kissing ball of roses and lace hanging from the middle. The music was winding down; Garrett eased them toward the doors, tucked them into the shadows behind one of the topiaries and the edge of the door.

“Ridiculous?” Isabela offered. “Stupid? Frivolous? Something only a Blessed Age damsel would wear?”

Garrett grinned. With each description he could hear Essa’s annoyance creeping into Bela’s voice.

“She loved it the moment she put it on,” Bela chuckled. “And complained every moment after that as she was paying for it.”

“She’d have been right about the damsel part…” he said, staring through the glass pane in front of him, trusting the candlelight reflecting off of the door to hide his face.

Her grey eyes were lined in silver, eyelids and lips dusted too, and the dress that poured down her body was silk and sin, layers of frosty white that fell like cobwebs and whispers to her feet from a heavily beaded collar. The gauze was mostly shapeless, nipped in low on her hips with a dropped waistband of the same icy beads, the layers above revealing  the shadows between her breasts and almost leaving too little to an imagination he didn’t need.

.”…but those boots…”

There were splits in her skirts, two that he could see as Fin spun her in a too-quick turn. The dress rose up around her legs, revealed a pair of boots he knew for fact were new. Supple red leather, embossed with the faint shimmering pattern of scales clung to her calves, laced from peep toe to the bottom of her knees. Oh, they were new. If she’d had them for more than a few days, he was fairly certain he’d already have marks from their heels on his back.

Garrett swallowed hard, mouth suddenly dry.

“She’s looking for you,” Isabela warned, shooting him and the flower arrangement an amused and far too knowing glance. “She just checked out the clock above the mantle too. I think she’s worried.”

“Good.”

He’d only been searching for her all night. He had seen the woman in white, of course. A dress too delicate for Essa, a tease of scarlet at her throat, another at her feet. He had written the mask off as too heavy, and the heels much higher than her usual, straying into the impractical territory Essa disparaged when shopping for shoes. She had used his familiarity against him. Garrett frowned.

“Let her worry.”

“You don’t mean that.” She took a step forward, mostly shielding him as Fin and Essa spun toward them.

Garrett smiled. “No, I don’t.” He ran one hand through his hair. “Dammit, Bela, she’s making fun of me with this right?”

Isabela’s laugh was rich and throaty and not a little mocking; Garrett fought the impulse to back deeper into the shadows.

“Of course she is.” She tossed him a smile over one shoulder. “But she’s making fun of herself too.”

She caught him by the arm and Garrett wondered if she intended to drag him across the floor.

“You mean to at least kiss her before the fireworks, don’t you?”

“At least,” he snarled, chuckling in chagrin when Isabela arched one brow and leered at him. “That wasn’t what I meant.”

“Liar.”

“That wasn’t all I meant.” Garrett took a deep breath, muttered nervously into the shadows at Isabela’s back. “I’m going to tell her–”

“There you are!”

Essa’s exclamation was just a little too loud as the music stopped and Garrett jolted guiltily, then chiding himself for the indignity even as he melted back against the wall. .

“Look at you!” He could hear the smile in Bela’s voice as she stepped forward to greet Fin and Essa with kisses. “You look wonderful.”

“Thank you.” Essa’s smile was shy on the edges and Garrett wondered what could possibly have her so uncertain. She turned back toward the floor. “Bela, have you–?”

Garrett thought that perhaps she had been about to ask after him, but Isabela interrupted her.

“Fin, I think there is time for one more dance before you have to be Bethany’s arms for your midnight kiss.”

She held out one hand and Fin smiled.  

“I believe you’re right.” He kissed Essa on the cheek. “Don’t worry, he’ll find you before midnight.”

“Who’s worried?” Essa scowled. “It’s just a silly tradition.”

But Garrett watched her face fall towards bewilderment as the music started and Fin and Isabela moved back out onto the floor.

She turned with her back to the door and that was when Garrett knew for certain that he didn’t realize she was hiding behind it. He stared at the long, bare expanse of her back and tried to decide the best way to announce his presence.

“That’s my bowtie,” Garrett said inanely.

Essa startled. Between breaths, he saw her go for her gun, fingers curling toward her palms and her magic when she remembered she wasn’t wearing one–house rules.

“It is.” Her shoulders relaxed as she turned to face him, a bit of temper in her eyes that he’d not only snuck up on her, but that he’d gotten the drop on her too. He would pay for that later, hopefully in a way they could both enjoy.. “Are you really hiding behind the door?”

She stepped around the topiary, gazed up at him through the soft fall of rose-scented shadows. The hem of her skirts brushed the tops of his shoes and then she was there with him, crowding close, warm and smelling of lemon and smoke and yes, pumpkin.  She reached for him, nails painted blunt and silver as a gun barrel, palms landing flat on the lapels of his jacket.

“I was wondering.”The words were soft, they hitched breathless as he found her waist with incautious hands. “If I was going to have to come get you.”

His fingers touched warm bare skin and Garrett failed to hear whatever she had said next. .

“Garrett?” Her lips twitched, fighting mirth. Maker’s breath, he was going to hear about this forever.

“You might,” she conceded, and he realized he had spoken aloud.

Essa stepped closer, body pressing into the frame of his as she came up on her toes. Her lips brushed his jaw, then his ear.

“I missed you,” she whispered as if she confessed some delicious sin.

“I missed you.” There was no point in denying it.

“Good.”

Essa backed away so quickly that she stumbled. Garrett caught her arms, thumbs automatically sweeping over the racing pulse on the inside of her elbows as he held her steady. He could hear voices around them falling toward gossip and delighted scandal. Whatever secrets they’d been keeping, they were out now.  

“I–” 

She shook her head, cast the words in among so many others and began backing toward the doors. Her smile was fleeting but genuine. 

“We are not doing this here,” she decided.

“Doing what?”

She couldn’t possibly think there was any hope of maintaining their shoddy cover at this point. Not with her standing beneath a kissing ball and him staring at her like a lovelorn fool.

“Es?” He was going to kiss her–put the gossip and his nerves to rest and be done with it–but she pulled away, gathered her skirts in clumsy hands.

“Fifteen minutes to midnight, Hawke.” She grinned impishly. “How fast are you?”

*

Essa panicked. Which was to say that she almost threw herself at him–again–and kissed him in front of everyone, and while she didn’t think there was a whole lot left to anyone’s imagination after that stupidity behind the topiary, she really didn’t want to kiss him at Bethany’s Kissing Day Ball with Fin and Bela and an entire ballroom smirking at them.She had worn red for him, but she hadn’t quite been prepared for how he would look at her—in front of everyone!—as if she were everything in the world he hadn’t known he was looking for.

Damn sentimental Hawkes and their Void-taken holiday.

“Essa!”

She was halfway across the veranda when he called after her, could hear amusement and confusion in his voice as his steps fell lightly upon stone tiles. There was laughter mingling with the music behind him, good-natured and shared, but she didn’t want to share him right now. Essa cast a laughing glance over her shoulder, hoped he would mistake her nerves for mischief.

“How the fuck do you run in those heels?”

He nearly caught her as she stepped from flagstone to grass, those heels betraying her, sinking deeper into the lawn than the thicker continentals she usually wore. She wobbled, balance nearly ruined by the heavy mask on her face and the tangling layers of the dress that she was currently lamenting along with all of her other poor choices of the evening. She should have found him immediately, not spent the better part of the night nervous and edgy.

Game of discovery be damned.

“Carefully,” she gasped, wrenching her feet free before darting forward, managing the last few strides to the garden wall before he got close to make a grab for her arm.She grabbed the stone arch with both hands, hauled herself around the corner as his fingers grazed her skin. “Very carefully.”

She righted herself on a stepping stone, hands shaking as she adjusted her skirts. Garrett stepped into the entrance to the hedge maze and Essa couldn’t help a frightfully damsel-like gasp. Moonlight danced across his hair just right, glittered white on the silver at his temples. By the Mabari, he was something else. Even in the shadows she could see bewilderment in his dark eyes, but he was still smiling, lips lifted soft and sweet at the corners. He had an easy smile, and Maker knew he was quick to it, but that exact curve Essa had found he kept just for her.

“You look beautiful.”

They spoke together and grinned just the same. He didn’t call her on her choice of words, and she didn’t bust him on his. Neither one of them was beautiful. Too blunt, too much fighter in them both, but to each other…well maybe they were. Essa backed down the first row of the maze, unwilling to take her eyes off of him, not quite ready to surrender the moment stinging sharp in her throat. His skin still clung to a summer tan. She wanted to place her lips in the open collar of his white shirt, taste that stark contrast against her teeth. She had almost given in so many times this evening, ended the game before it had even begun simply because she missed him. Now she was annoyed at the hours they’d lost.

“You’re wearing red.”

He followed her unhurriedly now. Essa moved slowly enough to keep her footing, felt along the high stone wall behind her for the beginning of the hedge maze.

“For me.”

“Not much.” She shrugged, scowled at him when he smirked at her. “But you know…special holiday or something.”

“Or something,” Garrett agreed. “You stole my bowtie.”

“I did.” An impulse, the proof of which she had thought it would be a dead giveaway, and yet somehow it had taken him all night to find her.

“You left me all night to squirm didn’t you?” she demanded.

“I did not!” He looked so offended that she giggled. “It took me all blasted night to find you. And now you’re running from me?”

“I’m not.” It was her turn to be offended. “I…”

“You what?”

She backed around the first corner, took another immediate left into a small lover’s nook as adorned for the day as everything else on the Hawke estate.

“I…”Essa took a deep breath, stared at the stone-columned pergola festooned with twinkling lights and lace garland, the high-backed bench with red and white cushions. “Tell your sister this is just too fucking much.”

Garrett followed her, smirk broadening with the insufferable glee she loved so much. She waved one hand dismissively at the bench, stopped beside the first column and stared up at him through the twinkling lights.

“I wanted to ask you something, if you must know.” She folded her arms beneath her breasts and stared past his shoulder as if it no longer matters. “You know, before I had my way with you.”

“‘Had’?”

He had her now and they both knew it. Essa shrugged again, cursed herself silently for the nervous tick.

“Have,” she corrected. She put the column between them, peered around it with a smile. “I didn’t trust myself not to blurt it out at you out there.”

She had lost track of him when Fin asked her to dance, had spent most of the waltz fretting over what he might say when she asked him to move in with her.

“So you really did plan on having your way with me in the garden?” His brows disappeared behind the top of his mask, but Essa knew he was waggling them at her. Why he hadn’t dropped the damn thing already, she didn’t know. “I had hoped that would be my prize for finding you, but—”

“Damn right I did,” Essa interrupted. “I’ve only been wanting to get you at least partially out of this tux all night.”

She thumped him on the chest.

“We aren’t going to talk about your stupid dragon mask,” she added.

“Oh, we aren’t?” 

He twirled the baton, his grin playing peek-a-boo with the dragon’s hollow eyes. He was laughing when reached for her again and Essa stepped toward him rather than away, let him pull her into his arms and tuck her close to his chest mindful of the spikes of her mask. 

“Yours is worse,” he murmured, leaning to one side so that he could press a kiss to her head. 

He tapped her ass with his mask and Essa snickered. “I know it.”

She heard the domino hit the ground, glanced to see him smiling down at her, secrets behind familiar mischief. Essa slipped her arms around his waist and held on tight as Garrett’s hands trailed down her back, undemanding and unhurried. For a moment they stood beneath the stars and twinkle lights, listening to the distance swell of the music and breathing deeply of the sparkling night.

“Garrett?” His heart was beating so hard and fast she could feel through the layers of their clothes.

“I wanted to tell you something too,” he admitted.

There was no sign of tension in his voice or his hands. His fingertips still traveled slowly up her spine, raising a trail of gooseflesh in their wake. Essa shivered, leaned back enough to look up at him, trusting he could see her concern behind the makeup and the mask.

“But now that I have you…” He smiled, tipped her chin up and brushed a kiss low on her cheek. “It’ll keep.”

“Are you sure?”

She hadn’t noticed her hands tunneling beneath his jacket. The habit was so well-worn that it wasn’t until her fingers splayed wide across his lower back that she realized she had pulled his shirttails free from his tuxedo trousers. She didn’t know if she would ever get used to it, the jump from comfort and easy affection to breathless need. Countless touches shared, and they still caught fire between breaths.

Garrett pressed back slightly into her touch with a sigh. “Am I sure that I want your hands on me right now?” He placed a gentle kiss on her other cheek. “I’ll swear it by whatever you ask of me.”

Essa lifted her lips, parted them on a tremulous breath. He nuzzled her nose with his, but he didn’t kiss her.

“I’ve been thinking of only two things all night,” Garrett murmured a whisper from her lips.

“One of those had better be–”

He kissed her before she could finish, kissed her again before she could ask what the other was. From the teasing kisses only seconds before Essa had expected something slow, as sweet as the look in his eyes, the soft brush of his hands along her spine. His lips took hers just shy of too hard and she gasped. Garrett sighed some wordless apology neither of them believed, before she kissed him back with more teeth than lips, chasing his breath as recompense for what he was stealing from her.

“Essa.”

Her name was a rough rumble of want, sudden and stark. She shivered as his beard scraped her chin, the abrasion brighter in the cool night air. Essa bit down on his bottom lip, laved away the sting with the tip of her tongue as she shoved his scarf and jacket from his shoulders with a little grunt of annoyance when they didn’t immediately fall to the ground.

“You have to let go,” she grumbled, not wanting to suffer the momentary separation, but seeing not reasonable alternative for getting him out of his jacket.

Essa pushed at his sleeves again and Garrett groaned against her lips, the sound traveling down into her chest, sinking lower. He released her just long enough for the jacket to fall away and then his hands tangled high in the partial fall of her hair.

“How does this…?”

The question was warm and wet against the taut stretch of her throat and Essa mumbled instructions she could only hope were useful. The bodice of her dress fastened at the back of her neck, a  short row of tiny buttons she had cursed until Fin did them up with surprising grace. They parted easily beneath Garrett’s fingers.

“Not fair.”

The top of her dress was pinned between them. Garrett’s fingertips brushed the nape of her neck and he turned back to her mouth, sucked the complaint from her tongue with an impenitent grin, as he crowded her farther back against cold stone. Essa whimpered, nails sinking into his back in retribution and encouragement.

“You’ve two perfectly good hands of your own,” he reminded her. He took the bowtie from her neck, placed a row of kisses against the skin he revealed.

“Yes, I do.”

His skin was warm beneath her palms and damned if she could form a coherent thought past her own need. Essa raked her nails lightly beneath the waistband of his trousers, listened to his breath catch as her thumbs swept roughly over his hipbones. She worked one button free, then the next, was debating how long they had and if she should take the time to get his shirt unbuttoned.

“Of course, we could just…wait.” He finally eased the bodice of her dress down, baring her breasts to the cool night air. “You did say you wanted to talk first.”

There was laughter in his voice and no small amount of well-deserved mockery as he bent to kiss place a wide, open-mouthed kiss above her heart.

“You should see your face.”

“Shut up.” She ran one fingernail along his zipper, the loud burr and steady touch silencing him for a breath. He was already hard, growing steadily harder beneath her attention. “I hate you, you know that?”

“I do.”

Essa eased his zipper down, ran her tongue over kiss-bruised lips as she touched him none too gently through his briefs. His eyes slipped shut. The sigh as he pressed into her hand was bone-deep and exultant.

“And I gotta tell you, Trevelyan. I really don’t mind.”

Essa snorted. “Well, I might. You seem to lack your usual finesse tonight, Hawke.”

His mouth was moving lower, hands rough on her skirts; the fingers gathering the gauzy silk lacked his usual finesse. She squeezed him once, chuckled softly when he fumbled and had to start again.

“Is there no end to this thing?”

He tugged on her skirts, frustration drawing his brows down sharply. Essa stroked him gently and he swore at her, hands clutching to fists against the silk before she took pity on both him and the dress.

“Here.”

She sighed, loud and long-suffering as she took his left hand, led him to the split in her skirt that ended at the top of her right thigh. When his fingers brushed bare skin a rush of heat and want left her gasping.

“Thank you,” Garrett said politely, smugly, gaze holding hers in a bold taunt.

“All better?” she asked just as evenly, as if she weren’t ready to crawl out of her skin and into his from the simple touch.

“You tell me.”

He bent his head over her breasts, caught one nipple between his lips as his palm smoothed up the outside of her thigh. Essa caught a moan against the back of her teeth. Better didn’t even begin to cover it.

“Garrett.”

He bit down gently, sucked at her hard enough that she grabbed him by the hair, clinging to him as her knees failed her utterly. She pulled his lips back to hers.

“Bench, please.”

He stopped teasing her, picked her up as if she weighed nothing. By the Mabari she would give him shit later for carrying her bridal style, but right now her legs were trembling too much to hold her up.

It helped that he hadn’t stopped kissing her.

“Sit.”

His lips twitched against hers. She’d catch it for those monosyllabic orders too, she thought, but right now she didn’t care. Garrett sat back among the cushions with her, hands and lips moving over whatever bare skin he could find. His calluses scratched lightly over her hips and Essa watched as white silk pooled at his wrists, shimmering in the moonlight.

“Fuck.” The word was a hallowed and honeyed in the hollow of her throat. “You’re not wearing anything under this are you?”

“No.”

And thank the Maker for that. She hadn’t quite planned for her own impatience, but she was glad of her impulse now.  Garrett reached for cupped her sex firmly, the gesture so sudden and greedy that Essa squeaked.

“What was that?” he asked.

There was laughter in his eyes, Essa scowled, watched that laughter brighten still more.

“You said you wanted to talk to me too,” she reminded him loftily, implying that they could always get back to their conversation if he was going to give her grief.

Essa lifted her chin to dodge a kiss. She was prouder than she should have been for rallying that single coherent sentence.

“I did.” Garrett stared up at her, lips swollen, eyes so dark they looked black in the moonlight. He stroked her gently, fingers sliding easily between wet lips. “I do.”

Essa rocked forward into his touch, bit back a hopelessly needy sound as his thumb moved in devastatingly familiar circles.

“But fuck if it can’t wait.”

“Oh, thank the Maker.” She reached between them, wrapped her fingers around the hard length of him, working him free of his briefs.

“Condom?”

“In the wallet my ass is currently sitting on,” Garrett said dryly.

They were laughing in their hurry, shuffling around like they weren’t two grown ass adults who’d done this countless times. Essa heard at least two seams rip as they shoved immediate impediments out of the way, and made short work of necessities. Garrett reached for her mask as she straddled him, body poised above that last moment of joining.

“Dammit, Essa, how do I get this off?”

Her smirk was immediate, her fingers slippery from her own arousal.They slipped twice–near clumsy with laughter and haste–as she guided him into her.

“Shut up. ” He thrust up as she sank down. Essa held back a moan with both hands. “If you’re the “this,” I’m fairly confident in my abilities. Now…”

His fingers were cool as they traced silver edges and Essa felt a momentary pang of regret. “The mask, Essa?”

“Too complicated to try in the dark,” she shrugged apologetically. “I thought…”

She had thought the mask might be half the fun. Essa frowned as his hands skimmed her back, the touch too gentle, too reverent.

“You’re awfully serious, Garrett Hawke.”

She rocked her hips forward, determined to steal the sudden soberness from his eyes.

“I wanted to see your face,” he muttered as she moved over him. “But it’s dark anyway, and I don’t need to.”

He leaned up,brushed a kiss to the hollow of her throat. “I know you,” he whispered against her frantic pulse. “I know that your eyes are going to go from flint to mist and that you’re going to swear at me.”

“I’m going to swear at you more if you don’t shut up and fuck me.”

“Liar.”

They were always talking, even sex was rarely an exception. She would tell him later how much she loved that, but not now, not with this blighted holiday sugaring every earnest whisper in candied red. Not with her body begging for more from him, not with her heart beating his name.

“Maybe.”

Garrett took her face in his hands, thumbs feathering lightly over her cheeks as they moved together, pleasure rising and falling with curses and praises, moans and laughter.

“Essa?” She had realized that her eyes had fallen shut. She opened them now to find him staring up at her, smile soft and too damned sweet. “I lo—“

Essa slapped one hand over his mouth, braced the other on his shoulder, legs trembling on either side of his as her orgasm threatened and she fought her body still.

“Don’t you dare.”

“What?” The word was muffled against her fingers, but his cheeks were bright. He caught her hips with his hands, brought them together hard and slow before he reached between them, circled her clit with gentle, knowing fingers.

“Don’t you dare—“ she began, glaring at him and–Andraste preserve her– _laughing_ as the orgasm tumbled over her in an effervescent wave, a bright cascade of twinkling light and warmth. “I’m going to kill you.”

Essa fell forward against his chest, head held just enough from his shoulder that she didn’t spear him with sharp silver points. Her fingers clutched tight to his smile as his eyes danced.

“Kill you,” she repeated merrily.

She bent her lips to his neck, set her teeth to his pulse and worried sharply at his skin, listened for the hitch in his breath. She clenched around him as his hips picked up speed, stroking faster through already sensitive flesh, drawing out a dozen little aftershocks.

“You did not just tell me you love me on fucking Kissing Day,” she hissed, eyes filling with what were absolutely not tears.

She rocked back hard with his next thrust, watched his face as Garrett reached his own climax, breath coming sharp and fast through his nose. Despite the afterglow, Essa wanted to strangle him.

He mumbled something against her fingers, then licked her palm.

“Ew!” Essa made a face and released him, wiping her hand on his cheek. “Dammit, Hawke.”

“I didn’t quite,” he pointed out, chest still heaving slightly. “Not before you assaulted me.”

“I will never forgive you,” she threatened, knowing he would never believe her.

“But, yes,” he grinned at her. “I tried.”

“Garrett–”

“I love you, Essa Trevelyan.” He caught her face in his hands again, held her gaze as she glowered at him. “I can’t believe I haven’t told you.”

She was _not crying_.

“I suspected, you great ass.” She slumped forward, head on his shoulder, remorseless when her mask smacking him in the neck and chin. The metal frame bit into her face and she sighed before turning her face away from him. “I can’t believe you picked now to tell me.”

“Special day.” He moved the knot of her hair aside what little he could, placed a kiss on the nape of her neck. Essa pinched him. “What did you want to tell me?”

“I _wanted_ –” She stressed the past tense. “To ask you to move in with me. You know, officially. I’m tired of sneaking around.”

Garrett’s laughter rose high over the small enclosure. “I think the secret’s out.”

“But I’ve changed my mind.” Essa yawned, snuggled as close as her costume would allow. “I hate you, and I never want to see you again.”

“Fair enough.” He placed a kiss on the back of her head. “You’re going to really hate me in a minute.”

He shifted slightly beneath her. “We can’t stay like this.”

Essa groaned. “I’m not saying it back until tomorrow.”

No sooner had the words left her mouth than the first fireworks lit the sky overhead, bursts of silver and red, white and pink.

“It’s midnight,” Garrett said as the night exploded in light and thunder. “Tomorrow.”

“Dammit.” Essa sighed. “I love you.”

“What?!” He shouted over the noise. “I can’t hear you!”

“By the Mabari, Garrett Hawke!” She knew full well he had. “I love you!”


End file.
